Matthew awoke with a thundering headache.

   His mind was chaos, trying to make sense of a battering amount of confusing signals relayed through his senses. He saw darkness mixed with spots of slowly pulsing, bright light all around his vision, but none of it made any sense to him.

   He sat up, looking around, his body aching everywhere. His blurred vision slowly coalesced into familiar shapes around him, shapes of people, all looking to be suffering from the same symptoms as him.

   “Where am I”? He heard someone say. “Who are you people? What have you done to me?”

   “We don’t know.” Another voice came. “We woke up here just like everybody, apparently.”

   “What do you mean we woke up? Where are we?”

   “We don’t know.”

   Matthew rose on his feet, feeling a little dizzy and resting his arms on his knees while he listened to the confusing exchange of words around him. What had happened? How did he get here? What is this place? He didn’t know, couldn’t remember. Neither did anybody else judging from the conversation around him.

   There were maybe more than two dozen of people around him, all of them either just waking up, or feeling sluggish from having just done so. He finally took a look beyond the people that were sprawled on the metallic-looking floor towards the horizon. It faded into blackness, the only light illuminating the area around him coming from above. He looked up, holding a hand in front of his face and regarding the various spots of blinding light through the cracks between his fingers, but could make out anything beyond them. He judged, due to the lack of stars, wind or any feature at all, that they were in a massive enclosed space of some sorts, and he thought he could hear a faint rhythmic humming but wasn’t sure if it was just because of his fading headache.

   “We’ve been obviously kidnapped.” Matthew’s mind picked up someone saying. “I mean, there’s no other explanation. What else could this be?”

   “If that’s the case,” another one said, “ then we need to establish a baseline of who we are, and why anyone would have a reason to do that. We need to know how important each and everyone one us here is.”

   Matthew looked at where the voice came, spotting a tall, grey-haired man in his fifties. Smart one, he thought. He took control of the situation immediately, spreading a sense of calmness through the crowd. Still, someone else started to sob a little, cursing under his breath as to why anyone would do this to him.

   “I’m a kindergarten teacher.” A young woman said. “Why would anyone kidnap a kindergarten teacher?”

   “A bus driver here.” Another man said.

   “Ehm… CEO of a pretty large corporation here.” A  bald man in his forties said. Everybody immediately turned, looking directly at him. He simply shrugged.

   “So, It’s you who they want!” A young man said, drawing a murmur of approving voices from the crowd. “We’re only leverage!”

   “No.” Matthew finally spoke. Everybody’s gazes suddenly shifted from the CEO guy to him. “It’s too early jump into such conclusions. We need to search this area, find out where we are first.”

   “Who are you to tell us what to do?” He heard someone say. Matthew sighed.

   “Trust me, please. We need to know what this place is first.”

   “Yes.” the grey haired man agreed. “Let’s take a look at what’s beyond this illuminated area.” Most people nodded, and they began moving towards the darkness.

   “Fuck this!” the young man who called out the CEO earlier yelled, standing right next to Matthew. “I’m going to fucking kill whoever did this!”

   Matthew sighed, while most ignored him. “Calm down. Anger won’t help the least bit now. We need to keep calm and find out what has happened to us. This isn’t your usual kidnapping situation.”

   “Fuck off man! What the fuck do you know about kidnappings anyway?”

   “Trust me, I know.”

   “The fuck you do.”

   Matthew sighed again, and simply turned and started walking.

   “Hey!” the young man yelled. “Don’t fucking ignore me motherfucker!”

   Matthew did just that.

   “Listen to me, you little-”

   Suddenly, the air around them shifted, lights swayed, shadows moved between them. Matthew only reacted when something plunged from above and grabbed hold of the man behind him. He spun and jerked backwards in the midst of shrieks and stumbling people, his eyes fixated on the strange, terrifying thing holding the torso of the man between two massive pillars, heaving him above the ground while the his legs flailed wildly.

   For a brief few moments as his mind tried to place the strangely familiar thing in his mind but couldn’t for some inexplicable reason, absolute silence overtook the crowd, only broken by the muffled screaming of the unfortunate captive. But before Matthew could react any further, the young man’s body simply exploded.

   Matthew was suddenly showered with massive amounts of blood that spayed in opposite directions from the man’s body, soaking his face and clothes in a dark crimson color. The thing then immediately retreated far above into the darkness, dropping the horribly mutilated body into the ground with a wet splash.

   “What-” Matthew tired to say, but his words were lost in the midst of the screaming and panic. He raised his hands, taking a look at the fresh blood sprinkled in his palms, feeling its realness. He raised his head again, looking around. Most people had dropped into the ground, staring at the crushed body with a primal fear on their faces he knew so very well. Others were vomiting while some closed their eyes, screaming and screaming endlessly. But amidst all the chaos, he could still see the faint outline, the afterglow of the thing he had witnessed in his vision. He knew what it was now, he was sure of it, his mind finally having adapted the scale of it, and for the first time in a long while, he was genuinely scared, scared of the hand that had just smitten a fully grown man out of existence. The hand of god.

   As if to confirm Matthew’s thoughts, a slow, sinister laugh suddenly boomed around the crowd, but tinted in the tone of a female. It terrified him, and quietened the whole crowd too. It went on for a very uncomfortable while before it faded, leaving everyone stunned in silence.

   “Wha-, wha-, wha-...” a woman finally tried to speak, her voice getting caught in her breath.

   “Welcome!” a thundering female voice boomed, echoing all around them. “We are going to have so much fun, my little playthings!”

   Then the light started to brighten, slowly revealing shapes and shadows beyond the darkness. And in one particular direction, the one where the voice had come from, the gigantic form of a human being began to take shape.

   Matthew stared, mouth gaping, as the form revealed a young, incredibly beautiful red haired giantess with piercing green eyes. They could only see her top half as the rest was hidden beneath the surface of what appeared to be a platform or a table on which they were standing. And she was naked, with two massive orbs of flesh protruding from her chest that one could only scarcely believe them to be breasts.

   Matthew stood in shock, silent as most others were, frozen in place by her intimidating scale, easily fifty times bigger than any of them. The giantess supported her head on the palm of one arm while the other rested lazily on the surface, its fingers visibly sprinkled with a reddish tint, and regarded the crowd with a soft smile.

   A middle aged woman from the crowd broke their transfixion and slowly rose to her feet, stepping forward while gulping down what Matthew judged to be her gripping fear, and asked: “Wh-, Who are you?”

   “Who am I?” the giantess said, laughing with that sinister tone that terrified Matthew to his core.

   “I,” she said while she suddenly moved her arms around the crowd, surrounding and trapping them, her face filling the sky and her body becoming their whole world, “am your worst nightmare.”

   Then the lights went out, and the screaming began.

      Matthew's heart pounded, he could feel it even through the screams of terror that gripped the crowd of people around him. The total darkness that engulfed them almost made him think that he was simply dreaming, but only almost. He knew this was real, you simply know when you're wide awake from fear.

      What kind of reality would this be though? He thought. Maybe it was afterlife, some kind of weird hell that awaited him. If it really existed, that's what he deserved anyway. He was after all guilty of too many sins. But a hell with a giant woman as some sort of dark angel? And how could one die again, like the young man just had. Questions and questions, Matthew was surprised by his calmness and coherent thoughts in the midst of the panic and terror that surrounded him.

      The screams slowly died down after some time without anything really happening. In the absence of light, Matthew tried to concentrate on any other signs movement, but he sensed nothing.  He listened as the screams turned into sobs, heavy breathing and soft murmuring.

      "This can't be real!" He heard someone shout. "She can't be real."

      "We all saw the same thing." A woman said with a shaky voice. "Didn't we?"

      "If that's a gigantic red-haired woman crushing that guy with her fingers, then yes, we all saw the same thing."

      "Which is why it can't be real! Please tell me this is some twisted prank somebody's pulling out on me! Please!"

      Nobody replied. Someone started sobbing again, sounding like a young woman.

      "Why me!" He heard her say in between the sobs. "Why would anyone do this to me? I'm just a simple art student, I only just met the love of my life, and I w-"

      Matthew stiffened again by the sudden familiar rush of air around him as the woman who just spoke broke into a ear-piercing scream and then abruptly moved up, her cries suddenly coming from far above them, becoming muffled.

      "Oh god, oh god, oh god!" A man's voice said. "Mighty lord! Forgive us for our sins! Save us from this hell! Save us from this terrible nightmare! I beg you!"

      They could hear the woman’s struggles and pleas for a few more moments before they slowly turned from those fueled out of fear into gruesome death throes, sounding more like those of a dying beast than human. Even in the darkness, an ice-cold chill overtook Matthew as the sounds that came from above supplied his mind with enough information for it to vividly render the woman slowly getting crushed by that all-powerful hand for Matthew, imagining the same fate to him.

      Her remained still, unmoving, and none of the others made a single sound either as they listened to the life that was being cruelly extinguished far above them, too stunned within the darkness by the power on display, listening as the screams died down and turned into gruesome squishy sounds that announced her end.

      For a few moments, Matthew could almost smell the fear that surrounded him on his skin, the air vibrating from the shaking bodies all around, the brittle atmosphere just one step ahead from exploding into chaos. He himself felt fear too of course, his basic survival instincts kicking in, but he was calm on the outside, conscious and in control of his mind. He wasn’t like the others anyway, he wasn’t normal after all.

      Then he heard a loud, wet splat on the floor just a few yards in front of him, causing many to yelp and howl out of fear, knowing all too well what that sound was. Cries broke out again, people sobbing and pleading for their lives, pleading in different prays to their different gods, and then breaking into full fledged panic yet again as the lights slowly came back and brightened, revealing the gory, oozing, inhuman thing on the floor, covered in deep crimson blood.

      This was so twisted, so horribly out of place, too difficult for the normal human mind to comprehend that it was beginning to break them, Matthew saw. But his mind picked out some sort of order behind it all, a purpose. It was what he was trained for. But it was still too distant to fully grasp, to understand this.

      He picked up a fast running person in the edge of his vision, and turned to look at him. The young man was running as fast as he could, screaming at the top of his lungs, heading for the darkness in the horizon. Matthew watched together with a few people that had stopped to look at him, anticipating what would happen next. None were sure what to expect, but the young man edged closer and closer into the darkness, before he disappeared in it.

      Matthew could feel the silence slowly returning, the young man’s apparent escape inducing some sort of hope into the crowd and quite a few sharing looks with each other, contemplating the same thing. But then they heard movement, literally felt it all around them, and after a mere eyeblink, they heard a loud thump coming from the darkness and a sudden thing being hurled through the air towards them.

      Matthew ducked instinctively, the object flying just above him and hitting a few people behind him with tremendous force. Of course, Matthew judged as he got back up and took a look, the thing turned out to be the young man who had attempted to escape, his body now sprawled on the floor, barely alive as he was suffering from multiple bone fractures, limbs bent unnaturally and choking blood out of his mouth.

      Matthew ignored the following panic yet again, turning back towards the spot beyond the darkness from where the young man was flung back, and as if in precognition, the lights brightened yet again, revealing the hand behind the darkness and the finger tapping gently on the floor that must just have been used to flick a whole person hundreds of feet through the air.

      He followed the shape of her arm, his vision turning slowly and appreciating every detail before he finally settled on her face. Her hauntingly beautiful face. He regarded the threads of fiery hair that flowed from her head onto her shoulders, and the emerald green eyes that gazed so lazily down upon them, her head still supported on her other hand. Her bored-looking demeanor truly frightened him, as if the carnage she had just caused was second nature to her.

      Again, in the midst of the panic, questions popped in his mind. Questions of her nature, of this situation he found himself in, but he could hardly string two coherent thoughts together that would make sense of anything. And then his train of thought was abruptly halted as he noticed her eyes flicker somewhere behind him, letting small, humorous sight out in the process.

      He turned his head back and spotted a woman making a run for it on the opposite side. Stupid, he thought. Stupid and dead.

      But Matthew was wholly unprepared for what followed when a shadow moved through the crowd and he barely had the time to make her hand out as it plunged downwards with imperceptible speed. In the split of a second, her fist slammed down upon the puny woman with such incredible force that the whole ground shook and tremored, throwing each and everyone from the crowd a few feet into the air.

      He was lost for a moment, laying down on the ground, stricken to his core by the sheer power he had just witnessed. That woman hadn’t just died, she had literally been erased from existence. The giantess’s thundering strike must have simply pulverized every piece of flesh and bone, liquefying her remains into an unrecognizable red stain. And he was proven so as he stood up and took a look at the pattern of blood that sprayed outward from the impact area.

      Matthew remained stunned for some time as the people around him were going crazy, the entire mass of grown people losing their minds. But he himself was amazed, awestruck that something so powerful really existed. He turned his head again, wanting to witness the face of this awesome power for a third time, but as he did so, his blood turned into ice.

      She was looking directly at him, her gaze paralyzing him on his spot. His breath got caught in his throat and he felt like he was being suffocated, like he was unable to bear the weight of her attention and was being crushed on all sides.

      “Interesting.” She said, raising an eyebrow.

      Matthew frowned, mustering the strength to break free from the snare of her gaze, and finally understood what she meant. Everybody was going crazy all around him, making hysterical movements and noises and just generally being random, but he stood out through his calmness, through projecting the appearance of control despite witnessing people being obliterated to oblivion without any means of defence.

      “Anyway.” She spoke again, shifting her gaze and capturing the crowd’s attention. “It’s getting late, we’ll be having more fun tomorrow, I promise! But first, I need a few of you.”

      And with that, she simply stood up, her body dwarfing the entire crowd even more and moved a hand towards them. Fortunately for Matthew, it wasn’t directed at where he stood but he still moved backwards, watching as many tried to escape her colossal limb, but most were too slow. She grabbed half a dozen of them, and seeming satisfied, she retreated into the darkness, leaving the rest of them wondering.

      Sometime later, they could hear the screams that were accompanied by slurping sounds, and moans that boomed throughout the space they were standing in, moans that creeped to their core. They understood what was happening, but it was just too difficult to accept, even with all that they had so far witnessed.

      Most of the crowd calmed down after they started hearing deep breaths that indicated that she had fallen asleep, the screams that emanated between her moans having long faded. They didn’t dare move out of the circle of illuminated area for the rest of the night, most simply unable to sleep from the shock and terror of the previous hour.

      But Matthew all the while contemplated, her sole word directed at him ringing in his head, worrying.

      Light suddenly flooded Matthew’s vision and he woke in a state of panic, breathing heavily and drenched in sweat. He rose up immediately, protecting his sight with his arms from the blinding light that surrounded him, his mind entirely confused. But he slowly remembered where he was, a part of him disappointed that it really hadn’t been a dream, another part surprised that he had actually managed to fall asleep.

      A soft murmuring and surprised voices announced that the others had woken too, if any of them had managed to get a bit of sleep that is, and that they were experiencing the same blinding light Matthew was. The cold hard floor he fell asleep on had been very rough, and the vivid nightmares he’d experienced were quickly fading, never to be remembered again, but he knew that not much time had passed, a few hours at most since he had spent most of the time in the darkness lost in thought. He wondered what would come next.

      As his vision adapted to the bright light, a sense of deep astonishment filled him from the sight. They weren’t surrounded by a circle of light shining down upon them, they were in a room. A fantastically huge room now filled with light shining from the ceiling, illuminating its entirety. It was mostly featureless, its walls painted in a light blue shade without any windows at all. There was a door on one side but without a handle, but nothing much else except the desk they were standing on that was lined up against the wall.

      And the bed. Surprise, fear, awe, amazement. Matthew picked up all these emotions and many more from the crowd’s reactions as their eyes fell upon the giantess that laid on it, her body mostly hidden by the sheets covering her, her face buried by her red hair and her form ever so slightly raising and falling between breaths. He would have guessed her to be sleeping if it weren’t for the hand that was protruding from the sheets towards some sort of device on the top of a small desk beside the bed.

      Then the door opened with a hum, its panel disappearing sideways into the wall. Everybody suddenly startled, a wave of fear spreading through the crowd. They reacted like frightened animals with every change, entirely predictable to Matthew, but he was genuinely curious. They waited for a few moments in anticipation before a figure emerged through it.

      Another giantess.

      Dozens of gasps, murmurs and prayers to god emanated from the crowd as they expected another round of torment now, but something felt wrong to Matthew. The other giantess, a young woman with brown hair that started walking towards them, was somehow fundamentally different to him, but he couldn’t quite place it.

      But as she approached the desk on which they were standing on, he immediately understood. She was less than half the size of the redheaded one, her head barely reaching above the surface of the desk. As she drew close, she turned her head towards them, her eyes meeting a frightened crowd of people too afraid to even dare make the slightest movement.

      But what Matthew saw in her expression disturbed him on a deep level. He expected to see the look he had seen in the redheaded giantess, one of pure control, arrogance and the demeanor of one holding almost infinite power over them. He instead saw the look of defeat, hopelessness, despair. Her could almost see her soul through her eyes in those moments, tormented, beaten down to absolute obedience. And it reflected onto him immediately. He hated his gift.

      And the signs on her body. There were bruises and cuts everywhere, the skin of a tortured body.

      But the giantess didn’t stop at them though, she turned her head forward again, entirely uninterested in them, and went to the opposite side of the bed where she stood there for a moment, waiting.

      “Goddess?”

      “Get inside.” The redheaded one said firmly without bothering to look at her. “I need to relieve myself.”

      The brunette didn’t hesitate and immediately climbed on the bed. disappearing under the sheets. Her destination was very apparent to everyone in the crowd as she settled between the giant one’s legs, and after a few moments, everyone could clearly hear the sound of someone drinking large amounts of liquid.

      “Oh god.” Someone finally broke the silence on the crowd. “What fucking twisted place is this?”

      A few backed off, shutting the ears with their arms and unable to accept what was happening, others started gagging, throwing up. They were slowly losing it again after their brief respite, Matthew judged, as if what happened yesterday wasn’t enough for them.

      “Human toilet.” Another man said as he let himself fall on the floor, burying his face on his hands and breaking into a mad laugh. “Now I’ve seen it all!”

      Matthew on the other end stayed quiet, calm and composed. He tried to analyze the situation but there were too many unknown variables he had to deal with at this point, it all still seemed too surreal to him.

      After the odious exchange of fluids was apparently done, the smaller giantess tried to get out of the bed but as soon as her head poked out of the sheets, the goddess grabbed her by her hair, pushing her inside and between her legs again.

      “There’s two of them inside of me from last night.” She said. “I’ve broken them too hard I think, take them out. Eat them.”

      Her words sent a ripple of shivers through the crowd, including Matthew. They all guessed what must have happened to the unfortunate ones, but to actually know for sure was difficult to accept. And ordering her to eat them? Matthew had seen some gruesome acts of sexual dominance in his career, but this was beyond anything he could have ever imagined.

      After a few brief slurping sounds, the smaller giantess finally retreated without objection from the bigger one she had called goddess. As she emerged from underneath the blankets, everybody could clearly see the sickening expression filling her face. She moved a hand to cover her mouth, visibly struggling to contain her drink, and with tearful eyes, she quickly walked towards the door without so much as shooting them a glance before she disappeared behind it.

      Then the lights went out again.

      This time, Matthew could not sleep at all. He lay in the darkness again,  in the midst of crying and sobbing people, his thoughts wandering aimlessly through his head in search of understanding. He found none.

      He wasn’t sure how much time had passed when the lights came back on again, maybe a couple of hours, but this time it looked like the giantess had fully woken up as she stretched her gigantic hands above her body and yawned deeply. As she stood up from her bed on her naked form, Matthew and all the others simply stared in awe at her indescribably huge and beautiful body. She truly was a goddess to them.

      Running her hands through her gently waving, flaming red hair that barely ran past her shoulders, she turned and walked towards the desk, her attention focused on them, her green eyes shaded in a deep tone against the backdrop of the light. She didn’t have any freckles for a redhead Matthew noted, standing still and staring at her while everyone backed off slowly. And her movements appeared majestic to his scale, which made it possible for him to appreciate every possible detail of her glamorous body. It was difficult to associate this female form with the one that had caused so much carnage. The motion of her slender legs that defied the laws of physics, the way her magnificent breasts jiggled ever so slightly every time she-

      That’s when Matthew was thrown back to reality, noticing the long streak of dried, deep red blood across her left breast. That could have easily been him, he thought. He quickly shook off his trance and moved back, not wanting to stand out yet again.

      “Good morning!” She said, her voice filling the entire sky as she approached and followed up with her intimidating scale. “I hope you had a good night’s rest.” She smiled teasingly. Her thighs slightly touched the front of the desk and her crotch stood just a few inches above it from her perspective. Matthew could not contain his eyes away from the gap between them and the monstrously huge sex that they protected.

      Then he saw someone approaching her from the corner of his eye. He dropped his head and watched as a man slowly trod lightly forwards, as did all others. He looked nervous, sweat running down on his brows while looked down on on the floor, never even daring to glance up.

      “What the hell is he doing?” He heard someone murmur. Indeed, Matthew thought, what the hell was that guy doing? It wasn’t smart to stand out before we know her intentions.

      Then, as soon as he created a reasonable gap from the group, he stopped and bowed down on the floor in a begging position.

      “Please!” He screamed at the top of his lungs. “Goddess! I bid you to spare us from your wrath! We have wronged, we have sinned!” He raised his hands towards her now “But give us the chance to prove ourselves, we will do anything, absolutely anything you ask of us! Please!”

      Stupid. Matthew thought. Stupid stupid stupid! If she wanted something from us, if she thought we could redeem ourselves in any sort of manner - if that’s what this is - she wouldn’t have killed the other three yesterday. No, this is something different, she isn’t what she appears to be.

      The goddess watched him, chuckling a little. Matthew was surprised she could have even heard him at her scale, but she appeared to have done so. Then she moved a hand towards him, pointing her finger and slowly approaching his little form until it hovered right in front of him, remaining still. The man didn’t know what to do, he was frozen in place for a few moments, regarding the gigantic finger in front of him, but after a few moments he decided to approach it, kiss it perhaps as a sign of obedience, Matthew guessed.

      But the giantess gave him no chance for as he was about to do so, she moved her finger up above him, surprising him, and slammed it down on top of his body, startling the whole crowd and pinning him down against the floor.

      “You’ll do anything for me?” She said with an unquestionably rhetoric tone, laughing softly. The stupid idiot struggled beneath her finger’s weight, his hands flailing wildly as he was visibly gasping for the air that has been crushed out of his lungs.

      “Listen carefully, you little vermins.” She said, her voice and expression turning frighteningly serious as she addressed the whole of them. “ You are nothing, you are less than worthless. You are in no position to bargain. You can offer me nothing. I do not ask, I do not even demand. I simply say, and you do. Obey, and you might survive long enough, spark my interest. But if you don’t, I promise you, death is something you will beg me for afterwards.”

      She then applied more pressure on the man beneath her finger, causing his ribs to start cracking audibly, reddening his face which held the expression of pure pain, and continued: “Even if death itself is my command.”

      Everybody stood in silence beneath her shadow, listening to the gurgling sounds of the one who dared address her directly. The was no question on Matthews mind, they would do exactly what she expected of them and obey her every whim. He himself wasn’t so sure though, judging by her actions, maybe the release of death would truly be merciful, if he could get a quick one.

      Suddenly, she released her victim from his pain, lifting her finger and moving her hand underneath the desk. Matthew watched her hand for a moment before he was distracted by the bloody coughs and gasps for air from the man. That’s when entire ground started moving downwards, startling everyone, but it moved slow enough without causing everybody to panic. And slowly, they were presented with a display of her body in her full glory as the desk lowred, not just her upper half.

      After af few moments, the desk had lowered enough for it to level completely on the floor of the room, bringing them right down to her feet. They had to crane their heads all the way up to see her face, and she even had to lean a little bit forward so that her breasts didn’t obstruct her view of them. She was so huge to their perspective, it was difficult for them to take in her whole body without having to move their heads.

      “Now,” she moved her right foot, planting it right in front of the slowly recovering man who now regarded it in utter terror, and crossed her arms. “ be a good example for everyone, get underneath.”

      His eyes widened as her foot rose slightly against her heel, revealeing the darkness beneath. He looked up at her, and then down again, and then up once again.

      “P-, p-, please!” He cried, shaking his head back and forth.

      But the giantess simply frowned at him, her expression darkening even more.

      “Get underneath, NOW!” She suddenly shouted with an almighty thundering voice that caused everyone to yelp and jump in terror, covering their ears in total fear, including the man who was now staring at the ground in utter horror, little bits of blood dribbling from his lips.

      He didn’t waste any time, and simply forced his for to move, pleading with every step until he finally reached the shadow beneath her foot.

      “Good.” She said, her mood relaxing a little. “Now, kiss it.”

      The man broke into a tears, mumbling please over and over again, but he did as he was told, and slowly rose his face to meet her skin of her underfoot, and kissed it, before withdrawing and and falling to his knees and continuing his pleas.

      “Good.” She said again. “Let this be an example for you. Next time, do not hesitate.”

      Then she simply lowered her foot down on top of the poor fellow. His body simply popped, without offering even the slightest resistance against the ball of her foot which flattened it on the ground effortlessly before proceeding to grind it into an unrecognizable stain.

      Most people on the crowd had moved their heads away in the last moments, or covered their mouths in shock, tears running down their faces, still pleading to their gods again and again. Matthew on the other hand hadn’t even flinched and watched the spectacle without taking his eyes off it, taking every detail in.

      He craned his head up, watching her face. She was smiling now. She knew what she was doing, he thought. This was planned by her. It is all a game. He slowly understood. But what game? To what end? He so had many more questions.

      The giantess savored the moment a little bit more before she turned and walked towards the door while the desk started to slowly raise again. Matthew never tore his eyes off her, and they fell down to her ass.

      Damn it! He cursed to himself as a wave of sexual tension gripped him. Why did she have to be so beautiful? His body alternated between survival instincts and arousal, it was terribly confusing.

      But she stopped just as she arrived at the door, and turned her head back. “I almost forgot.”

      “Fuck!” Matthew uttered under his breath. She walked back towards them. “Fuck fuck fuck!”

      She swiftly reached them, standing right in front of them again as the desk was still raising, her eyes searching. She moved her hand over them, hovering it above them, slowly shifting it around. Matthews heart pounded, hoping it really wasn’t what he was thinking. He hoped she had forgotten, she really looked like one who would. But when her eyes fell upon him and she smiled, his heart almost stopped.

      “Fuck!”

      It all happened so fast.

      Her hand lowered, hovering right in front of him with her palm facing upwards, and then moved forward in a swift motion, hitting Matthew’s lower legs with the point of her middle finger, pushing them backwards without effort and causing him to fall face-first on it. He latched onto the finger instinctively for support, but as soon as he did, his entire world turned upside down. He screamed from the confusing motion as she bent her finger back and then with a sharp flick, he was unlatched from her finger and propelled down on her palm where he landed with a smack. He had no time to get his bearings as her fingers curled all around him, imprisoning him inside before she started moving.

      All that Matthew could see within the darkness was the bright light seeping through the cracks between her curled fingers as he tried to desperately hold onto something and stop his tumbling form that was being thrown around, unable to recognize anything outside as the light swirled too quickly. She was walking, taking him somewhere as he left the rhythmic sensations of her footfalls, the g-forces becoming slightly hard to withstand. But she didn’t walk far as he soon felt being lowered somewhere until her fingers retreated and her palm tilted, tumbling him into a cold, hard surface.

      When Matthew finally regained his composure, he found himself in a vast expanse of pure white without any features at all. He looked up, expecting her to loom above but he only caught a glimpse of her red hair before she disappeared behind a while wall that sloped smoothly from the ground. That’s when it clicked for Matthew, reminding him of something that has been bugging him in the back of his mind for quite some time: he had presumed she was a gigantic woman, but the few revelations he had experienced in the past few hours made him think that perhaps she wasn’t big, but he was small. And the huge bathtub that he now found himself in only reinforced his belief.

      He wasn’t given much time to think much further though as a clicking noise on the walls of the bathtube grabbed his attention. He looked up and saw dozens of small, square-shaped parts of the walls retreat, revealing only darkness behind them. He wondered for only a brief moment before water shot from all the squares, the jets hitting the opposite sides of the wall which Matthew now understood them to be purposely shaped so the water never splashed but simply glided down into the surface, filling it. And he was in the middle of it.

      “Fuck!” Was all he could manage to say before the gush of warm water hit him from all sides, throwing his puny little body about like a rag doll while the water filled the tub. He lost his orientation for a moment while submerged and panicked, but as soon as the water level reached the holes from which it poured, the waves calmed down and he swam towards the light and reached the surface, gasping heavily for air in the process.

      He wasn’t even given a little bit of respite before a looming shadow surrounded him, giving him only a brief moment to glance at the gigantic descending foot before it crashed into the water right next to him, the resulting waves lifting him up briefly before he was sucked down under water again by the massive currents.

      This time, he let himself be handled by the forces that surrounded him without resistance. Down below the surface, he simply floated, watching her other foot descend and crash into the water with an unstoppable momentum, the thought of a being wielding so much raw power truly terrifying him.

      As he naturally rose towards the surface, her lower body too slowly settled on the tub, the transient diffractions of the shimmering light that passed through the water’s surface giving Matthew an unprecedented view of her most private parts, even though she apparently didn’t care about her privacy, not towards them.

      Her body disturbed the water only gently this time, and as Matthew reached the surface again, the resulting large wave carried him smoothly over without rendering him further powerless. But after a brief pause, she continued to submerge and soon settled her entire body flat on the tub’s floor, holding her breath and with eyes closed.

      When the water fully calmed down, Matthew could only stare in silence at the gigantic entity resembling a human female that floated dozens of feet below. It was like being a tiny fish trapped inside a bowl together with a giant predator, and and incredibly beautiful one too.

      He marveled at the sight for quite some time, watching the huge orbs of flesh that were her breasts gently wobbling side to side, especially the one with the now dissolving blood plastered on its skin, and her face that was buried beneath the millions of threads of flagrant red hair that now sprawled all around her head, darkened from being wet, and the sheer intimidating scale that made it impossible for him to be able to regard parts of her body without turning around.

      Almost a minute passed, and he was still floating on the surface, unsure of what to make of his situation. He turned to watch her face again, and in that instant she opened her green eyes, staring directly at him. Matthew flinched in fear, but then massive currents of water started moving underneath him as she rose up slowly, her head emerging from the water and the red hair sticking all around it. She moved her hands and brushed her hair behind her head, the wet threads remaining perfectly still and clearing her face of them entirely. To Matthew, her face appeared perfectly symmetrical, almost divine. Her eyes, eyebrows, nose, lips, all perfectly matching, their shapes complimenting her natural bone structure flawlessly and without spect of impurity on her skin.

      Then she moved her right leg, bending it back so that her knee rose up. I was too late when Matthew noticed that she aimed it directly at him and he suddenly found himself being stranded on a fleshy but rough island in the middle of the tube as her knee protruded slightly out of the water, and that she was regarding him intently now.

      “What is your name?” she said with a booming voice.

      “Uhm…” Matthew was taken a little off-guard. “M- Matthew.”

      “Matthew.” She acknowledged, taking her eyes off him. She moved her right hand out of the warm water and proceed to wash out the stain on her left breast, rubbing and kneading it until disappeared completely into the water. Balancing himself steady on her knee, Matthew could only watch the arousing spectacle in front of him, easily imagining the incredible forces that had shredded a person’s body yesterday in order to produce the stain.

      “So, Matt.” She said, looking at him again. “You seem like a peculiar specimen. When everyone of your peers was screaming and panicking, you displayed a distinctive sense of control. Tell me, aren’t you afraid?

      “Afarid?” Matthew said, unprepared for the conversation he found himself in, and a little bit surprised that she could hear him in the first place. “I am. I am very afraid, but a long time ago I have learned to control my fears and instincts, approach things calmly.”

      “I believe you.” She said, a soft smile forming on her lips. “But I saw more.”

      Matthew siffened.

      “I saw awe.” She continued. “Marvel, wonder, almost as if you liked what you witnessed.”

      “I didn’t!” Matthew said immediately, growing angry but not sure if it was towards her, or the truth of her words. “They were innocent people, they didn’t deserve to die, not like that!”

      She chuckled. “Perhaps not that then. Perhaps I simply saw reverence. After all, aren’t gods above morals? Above petty concepts such as innocence?”

      “You are no god.”

      He caught a little twitch on the corner of her mouth, and Matthew immediately regretted his choice of words, fearing he might have gone too far. He grew frightened beneath her sudden unreadable expression, expecting to become a simple stain at any moment now. But instead she closed her eyes, breathed in deeply and leaned back, resting her head against the tub and relaxing.

      “Bold one, aren’t you?” She said. “Careful, Matt. Anyone of my other minions would be a simple smear right now, but I guess you can read situations well. You take your chances when you think there’s something to be gained.”

      Matthew frowned, unsure of how well he was really reading the situation, but he wasn’t about to make that mistake again. He really was afraid of her and convinced that one more misstep and she wouldn’t care.

      “I’m sorry.” He said. “I just expected a god to be… “

      “Different.”

      “Exactly. I mean, rooms? Stuff like beds, sheets, desks, bathrooms, tubs etc? This is not how I imagined hell to be like.”

      “Hell.” She said with a sort of ironic tone. “I suppose I’m very unceremonial, but don’t worry, you are still very much alive, Matt. Tell me, what is it that you did before you came here?”

      “What I did?” he frowned, slightly upset at the notion of having chosen to come at this place instead of having been dragged forcefully... probably, he didn’t remember. “You mean, what my job was?”

      “Yes, I’m curious.”

      “Uh, Ok.” He said. “I was a Forensic Psychologist at the International Investigation Agency, also filling the role of a Psychological Profiler there.”

      The redheaded goddess suddenly opened her eyes again and looked at him, smiling widely. “So you used to catch violent criminals?”

      “Uhm, well, I used to help catching them.”

      “Well,” she said, letting out a small chuckle. “ ain’t you finding yourself in a precarious situation now.”

      “Why?” He said with a sarcastic tone. “Aren’t gods above morals after all?”

      “Ah, cocky and a sense of humor too.” She said while leaning her head back again and relaxing. “A good mix if you want to get yourself in trouble.”

      “I get that a lot.”

      “No doubt about that now.” She said. “Anyway, describe me your work, how you went about it.”

      “I…” Matthew was unsure about the direction this conversation was taking, but it was perfectly clear that what she wanted was for him to be interesting to her if he wanted to survive. “I basically drew mental images of the criminal’s minds. My job was to understand how they thought, how they behaved, what their desires and motivations were, how their past influenced their personality and combine all this into a profile that would help us predict their next moves and catch them.”

      “I see.” She said. “It fits you well.”

      “Fits me well? What do you mean?”

      “I recognize a killer when I see one, Matt.”

      Matthew said nothing, frozen on his spot, stunned at how easily she had seen past him. In all his time at the IIA, nobody had ever suspected a thing, and it was the perfect disguise in his never ending quest to quell his inner urges. But she had seen past all that in just a few observations.

      “But don’t worry.” She said. “You’re in good company. Now, how about you profile me?”

      “You?”

      “Yes, me. I want you to entertain me with your elaborate psychological terms, tell me how crazy a psychopath I am.”

      “You’re not a psychopath.” He said.

      She opened her eyes yet again, regarding him intently. “I’m not?”

      “An amateur might come to that conclusion.” He said. “But I don’t think so.”

      “You don’t think so, or you know so? Which is it now?”

      Matthew let out a long sigh. “Look, this is all too much for me! I don’t know where I am, I don’t know how I got here, all I know is that I’m at the mercy of an unbelievably large and beautiful woman who may or may not be a malevolent divine being able to obliterate people without the slightest remorse or even use them as simple sex toys. I’m both mentally and physically exhausted from fear, shock and post-traumatic stress disorder, yet I’m being asked to draw her psychological profile without knowing anything about her past, her patterns, her behaviour and very little time to think about it. I can’t.” He lied. He could, but he needed to bargain, his life was at stake. He would have to stretch whatever this was and see where it would take him.

      “Fair enough.” She said and suddenly moved a hand towards him, grabbing and handling him softly before Matthew found himself on a much softer fleshy surface now. Orienting himself, he found that he was now lying across her massive left breast.

      “Rest, then.” She said, her voice now thundering all around him .“We’ll continue this when you’ll be ready.”

      Matthew said nothing, and simply took his chance. He needed this window of opportunity if he wanted to survive, he didn’t expect her patience to last if he didn’t make himself useful and interesting, but he wouldn’t let himself get boring too fast. Lying down, he rested his head on his right ear, listening to the distant booming of her heart whose vibrations he could feel with every fibre of his body while being gently lifted up and down by her breathing motions. He slowly drifted into his train of thoughts under the breeze of her exhaling winds, exhaustion overcoming him.

      “I guess, “ she said after some time, “all you need is a little demonstration.”

      Matthews eyes suddenly shot wide open. Had he just doomed who knows how many innocent people? And why did he even care? He was a killer, after all. 

      I looked at the man in the mirror, looked him the face. I tried to see beyond his eyes, tried to judge him, his feelings, his emotions. That’s what I’ve always been good at, my gift and my curse. Empathy.

      And I saw.

      Fear, doubt, regret. They surrounded him, filled him, tried to suffocate him. But I also saw something else, a glimmer of a curious emotion, pride. But what was he proud about? That he had somehow entertained a god? That he had briefly been the recipient of such a powerful being’s undivided attention? Was that really something to be proud of? After all, he was a mere speck beneath her presence, the ultimate definition of powerlessness. Something she is simply toying with, playing games, ready to be discarded at any moment it gets boring. It was a feeling no different than that of a dog having brought back the stick his master had thrown.

      Yet, for some reason it persisted.

      I moved my eyes, beyond the meager form in ragged clothes and into the background. I had to focus to see her clearly, my mind still had trouble wrapping around the idea of a body the size of a mountain moving around like that, it all felt incredibly unnatural. She moved about as she dried her hair, having put on undergarments in the meantime. I turned around from the mirror image and looked at her real one from the spot she had placed me on top of a shelf of the bathroom counter after our bath. She was without a doubt the most difficult character I have ever tried to read, but I suppose it was befitting of her. She didn’t make sense after all, neither physically nor mentally.

      She finished with the dryer, and moved her hands through her blazing red hair, brushing them. Then she turned at the mirror, regarding her hair before proceeding to shake her head, naturally stringing the countless threads into gently waving strands. She stopped, satisfied at her appearance, and was about to turn when her green eyes fell on me, as if she had suddenly remembered something important.

      Naturally, I froze, mouth still gaping. That’s what her gaze did to you at that scale. Every damn time. It was hard to get use to. And when her characteristic soft smile formed on her lips, with some strands of her hair still spinning in momentum, I experienced something I never did previously: Tunnel Vision.

      It was like time had stopped, and I had fallen into eternal serenity. I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but she had such a profound effect on me at that moment that I still remember it vividly, as if the image was etched into my mind with a burning piece of metal. I was suddenly filled with a raging inferno of conflicting emotions. Desire, lust, maybe even the first trickles of love, I don’t know for sure, but what I remembered the most was the profound fear. Not because of her power, no. At that moment, I feared that I would disappoint her somehow, that I would be forgotten by her, discarded, abandoned. At that moment, I became determined to do everything in my power and ability to become useful to her no matter what she would require of me. I never wanted to feel that dreadful feeling ever again.

      Ah... how little I did know at that time of the unspeakable horrors I would have to witness.

      Matthew paced back and forth through the room, deep in thought.

      It was a normal-sized room by his standards, though he knew otherwise since from the outside it looked like a drawer where, after the bath, she had placed him as if he were merely a toy, which he supposed himself to be anyway. It was simple, much like everything else in this place, just a bed to lay on, a simple leathered chair in the middle of the room, featureless walls and a simple door that led to a bathroom.

      Hours had passed while he rested, giving him time to think about her, about this place he found himself in, about his sanity, and getting a bit of sleep here and there. But he was no closer to understanding what was going on than he was the first moment he saw her. The only remotely logical conclusion he had arrived at was that he was abducted and was now subject to the most bizarre experiment he could have ever imagined, a line of thinking that resembled some B-Movie plot more than it did reality.

      Every possible explanation resulted in more and more questions instead, his thoughts spiralling into endless theories, each crazier than the other. But with hours of having nothing else to do, his mind was forced to be entertained by these ceaseless thoughts while his restless body demanded physical activity. And so, he paced around the room, back and forth, hands clasped behind his back, tracking to one end and turning around before tracking to the other and again turning arou-

      There she was, right in front of him.

      It was simple instinct. Matthew jumped back in sudden fear of the totally unexpected, tripping and stumbling back, hitting his head on the floor.

      “What the-” He said through the pain, holding his hands on the back of his head. He looked up at her, squinting as if to help make her form more visible and discern her from a ghost. But no, she was really there, wearing a shirt beneath a jacket, simple jeans and beautiful black heels, her majestic red hair flowing down her shoulders and her piercing green eyes filled with glee from quiet laughter. “How?”

       “Are you really surprised?.” She finally said after her chuckle had subsided.

       He supposed he shouldn’t be. He stood up, his eyes never leaving hers. It was incredibly strange to see her body on his level, barely reaching his height. He marvelled at her sight for a moment, she appeared even more beautiful now that he could take her whole body in with his sight, looking like a normal person. “Why are you here, like… this?”

      “I’m not.” She said. Matthew frowned. She turned her head to her side, towards the wall. “Look.”

      “Wha-” The entire wall suddenly sprung to life, brightening and causing Matthew to shield his eyes for a moment before they adjusted. When he finally looked at it, he saw… her. Or rather, an image of her. She was naked, sitting with crossed legs on what appeared to be a throne-like chair, metallic in appearance and inscribed with strange engravings. Her chin was resting on one hand while the other stretched along the armrest, overall striking an incredibly seductive pose. There was a glass jar on the armrest too, holding something amber-colored in it.

      “Hi, Matt.” Her image on the wall said.

      Matthew shifted his gaze back and forth between the image on the wall and her form in the room. “Ok, I’m confused.”

      “Understandable.” Her normal-sized body that stood right in front of him said. “But she’s the real me. While I, ” She continued as she approached Matthew and held a hand in front of his face, “am not.” And then moved her hand forward. Matthew fully expected the sense of touch, but instead his sight turned into a swirling, confusing pattern of colorful light which made him flinch and close his eyes in instinct.

      “What the heck was that?” He said while taking a step backwards. He opened his eyes again, half-expecting to be in a completely different place, but she was still there, and so was her image on the wall.

      “As I’ve said.” Spoke the image on the wall this time. Her form in front of him in the meantime moved forward again, and swung her arm sideways through his chest. To Matthew’s astonishment, it simply passed through. “That’s not the real me. It’s just a projection, a Hologram.”

      “What?” Matthew reached forward, trying to touch her instead, but his hand too passed right through her body. “How is this even possible?” He asked, somewhat disappointed that he couldn’t touch her like a normal person.

      “Let’s just say, technology.” Her hologram said.

      “I’ve never seen this kind of technology!”

      “You haven’t seen a lot of things, Matt.”

      “But,“ Matthew said, shifting his gaze through the hologram from top to bottom and back. “ are you controlling this in real time? Yourself?”

      “Yes.”

      “And how is that possible?”

      “The same way you can drive a car and talk at the same time.” Her hologram said. “The same way you can walk, run, jump and all other things in dreams without moving one bit of your real body. It takes a little bit to get used to, but after a while it becomes second nature.”

      “Ok.” Matthew pretended to understand. “But to what end?”

      “Ah.” Her hologram smiled. “Why don’t you take a seat.” She said while gesturing towards the leathered chair in the middle of the room.

      Matthew nodded and walked to the chair, sitting on it. He now noted that it was placed exactly opposite to the image on the wall, having her real body sitting directly across on the metallic chair, her eyes level with his but unfocused, and ominously quiet. He also noted that her image too was about the same scale as his body. Her hologram too approached, its motions completely realistic. Every limb moved the way you’d expect, every piece of clothing stretched and kneaded the way it was supposed to, and even her footsteps on the heels made the clacking sounds he expected. Think kind of technology really was too advanced to be real for him.

      “You see, I was in the mood.” She said as she placed herself to the left of Matthew and stood there, facing the image on the wall. “I wanted to experiment a little, and thought you should probably watch.”

      “In the m- “ Matthew managed to say before he realized what she meant, growing tense. “Oh.”

      He turned his head towards the wall, and in that sudden moment, it truly came to life. The image deepened, as if extending beyond the wall. The room she sat in blending with the one he was in, the wall that separated them disappearing and everything beyond becoming three-dimensional. Now, he found himself appearing to be in the same room as two of her normal-scaled bodies.

      He grew wide-eyed. “Another illusion?”

      “Yes.” Her hologram said. “You can see everything that is happening on the other side, but nothing can be seen the other way around.”

      “Like an interrogation room.”

      “Exactly.” She said. “We don’t want to cause distraction on the other side. Now, time for a little bit of fun.”

      The brightly lit walls that surrounded the room beyond shimmered for a few moments before they changed their appearance and formed a coherent image across all of them. It was an infinitely extending expanse of pure white, blending with the floor of the room so that made the chair she sat on appear to be the only feature in the middle of nowhere. Even the ceiling took a ghastly look of a bright, white sky. It was a sight eerily resembling some heavenly throne. She really liked to portray herself as divine, Matthew noted.

      “What do you suppose happens, “ Her hologram said, “to a human body if deprived of food and water for three days?”

      Matthew turned his head towards her life-like hologram, confused at such an unexpected question. “I know for a fact what happens. Depending on the conditions, three days would be pushing it for water, five would be the extreme. And as for food, the brain cannot find any source of energy in the body, having used most of the stored sugars and fats in the previous 72 hours, and begins the process of converting muscle tissue into glucose to sustain itself. Basically, it starts cannibalizing its own body in order to stay alive.”

      “Good.” She said. “You know your Biology well. But tell me, what happens to the mind?”

      “The mind?” He said. “Thirst and hunger become unbearable. A person starts to think about food and water, constantly. Food, water and nothing else. Every instinct in a persons body starts to push it towards finding a source of food or water, no matter the cost.”

      Her projection said nothing, but simply smiled with a satisfied smirk, then turned her head towards the room where her real body sat, still quiet and unmoving. Matthew followed her gaze and then noticed something on the floor, a few feet in front of her chair. It was a small square-shaped hole that hadn’t been there before.

      Matthew tried to lean forward a bit and get a better look, but that’s when something started to pour out of the hole. It took him only a few moments to realize that those were humans, dozens and dozens of them, barely more than an inch tall, climbing out of what appeared to be a staircase that led to the surface. He watched in silence as they slowly filled the area just in front of her, their legarthic movements betraying tiredness, but their expressions filled with pure awe.

      “Those people, “ Her hologram said, “ come from a primitive culture, barely having invented writing and metal casting.”

      “Huh?” Matthew looked at her. “I wasn’t aware such people existed in modern times.”

      “They come from a place you don’t even know exists.“ She said. “But right now, it doesn’t matter where and how, you’ll just have to take my word for it.”

      “Uhm, Ok.” Matthew turned back towards the mass of people that spread at her feet. He noticed that they all appeared to be wearing some kind of ragged, primitive, greyish-colored clothing, confirming her statement. “And what do you intend to do with them?”

      “Nothing.” She said, a devious smile creeping on her face.

      “I doubt that.”

      “Oh, I don’t doubt your doubt.” She said. “But mostly, they are going to doom themselves.”

      Her hologram suddenly became stiff, rigid in its pose and Matthew caught her real body standing up out of the corner of his eye. He turned his head and watched as she stood in front of all the small people, arms crossed and regarding them with an overbearing superiority in her pose.

      The last time he had seen her utterly dominating a group of people with her presence was when he was part of them too. This time though, seeing her do it from a safe distance, was quite something else. The overwhelming power she held over them was intoxicating to Matthew. The theme of power played a significant role in many of Matthews cases, but he had never seen or even imagined power being displayed in such a simple, pure form. Those people were completely helpless against her whim, hopeless against her most delicate motions. Weak, fragile…

      “Pathetic.” Said her Hologram, as if she had read Matthew’s mind. “Just look at them, at their gazes. All their life they had believed in an explicitly male God. And now they’re standing before one, completely baffled. Their religion had taught them that after their deaths, they would have to endure a three day long journey without food and water towards their form of heaven. Only the strongest would endure, the rest would fall into the pits of hell. And once they arrive at the gates, their god would finally set their souls free.

      “Those are the surviving members of one such particular three-day long journey.” Her hologram said while the real her hovered one foot above them, causing them to quiver in fear but still remain disciplined. “But now, it’s time to shatter the lie.”

      Matthew held his breath as he fully expected her to smash her foot into them, but she didn’t and retreated it back. Instead, she moved her index finger in her mouth and thoroughly coated it with her saliva before she crouched down and held her finger hovering in their midst.

      The crowds suddenly surged, swarming towards her finger, throwing themselves at it, pushing and shoving each other in the fight for the precious life-giving liquid that dripped from her finger. Matthew watched silently while she caused the incredible furore at her feet in such a simple way, reducing them to crazed crowd that fought one another for her own spit.

      She repeated the process two more times. After they had thoroughly cleaned her finger free of the last drips of saliva, she stood back up and regarded them for a moment while the crowd looked at her with hopeful gazes. Without giving them time to prepare, she amassed a small amount of spit in her mouth, and spat it like a projectile in their midst. Matthew clearly saw it hit a few people with such a tremendous force that it probably shattered several bones, fatally most likely judging by the screams. Now she killed people with her own spit too, was there an end to her ways? But the more remarkable thing was that after the initial shock she had caused, most people threw themselves yet again at the slimy liquid without regard for the injured.

      “As I’ve said.” Her hologram broke the silence. “Pathetic.”

      Matthew remained silent as his gaze shifted to her real body which turned around and got hold of the jar that had been standing on the armrest the whole time. She opened the lid, and dipped a finger in the amber-colored liquid inside. As soon as she retreated her finger, he immediately knew what it was judging by its thick viscosity.

      “Honey?”

      “Uh-huh.”

      She turned towards the crowd and brought her finger close to her mouth, extending a tongue and licking part of the slowly flowing nectar. Most of the crowd had already turned towards her, watching with anticipation at the pillar of flesh coated with the sweet substance that their stomachs craved with incredible urgency. But she didn’t reciprocate her earlier actions. Instead, she put her finger in her mouth and licked it clean of any remnants of honey, and then sat down, leaning against the base of the throne and spread her legs wide open, placing them on either side of the crowd and inviting their gazes to a spectacular view of her crotch and immense sex.

      Then she dipped her finger into the jar again, but this time only coating the tip of her finger with honey before retreating her hand. Matthew finally understood her intentions when she moved her finger towards her crotch, and slowly layered and smeared her clitoris with the viscous liquid until there was none of it left on her finger and rested back, giving the crowd of people an inviting look.

      “Time for the experiment to begin!” Her hologram said.

      It didn’t take long, just a few seconds before the first ones started running with an urgent eagerness in their pace and then the whole crowd followed suit. Matthew watched her gaze as an anticipating smile formed in her lips, watching their strides between her insurmountable thighs and closing her eyes just before they reached her most sensitive piece of flesh.

      Her hologram suddenly flickered as scores of tiny little men and women enveloped her sex and overwhelmed her nerve-ends. Matthew on the other hand simply stared at the scene that unfolded beneath her crotch, watching the most ridiculous act of sexual gratification he could have ever thought of. They climbed the folds of her labia, crawling towards the essence that would quell their pain of hunger, fighting with the last piece of strength left in their bodies. But even Matthew could see that there was not enough for all of them, and the scramble began.

      Some started grabbing the ones above them on their legs, pulling them towards the ground and then trampling over them for better footing. Others pushed and shoved the weaker ones out of the way towards their destination, struggling for the scarce means of holding on to the cleanly shaven surface. All the violence, fighting and scuffle for the preposterous notion of climbing a vagina. That’s what she had reduced them to.

      Matthew saw her whole body tense when the first ones reached her clitoris and divulged into licking it clean of the nectar coating it, moaning in delight. She clenched her fists and threw her head back as more and more tiny people managed to reach their destination, quickly devouring all the honey. Her hologram was flickering violently now.

      With heavy breath, she moved her finger into the jar and again coated it with a thin layer of honey and then moved it towards her sex. Without much regard, she pummeled her finger through them and then flicked the remaining ones off her clit, sending them flying back into the ground and injuring many before she repeated the process of layering her clit and the area around with honey and the struggle for the sweet nectar renewed.

      Another wave of desperately hungry people fighting for their survival overloaded her pleasure nerves and sent ecstatic shivers through her body, causing her to moan loudly. Her lust was overwhelming her and several times she moved her hand short of her crotch, barely containing her need for release. Her sexual scents surrounded and thickened the air throughout the packed crowds but it didn’t deter them of their own needs. Still, there was far less honey than they needed, and Matthew knew it was deliberate by her.

      Barely being able to concentrate, the red-headed goddess moved her shaking hand towards the jar and dipped both her index and middle finger deep inside, sticking them with quite a large amount of honey, and moved it back towards her sex. But this time, she didn’t apply it to the surface. Instead, the crowds watched, unmoving, as the two fingers disappeared inside her love canal and thoroughly rubbed the flesh inside before they retreated without the honey but with a thick layer of cum coating them instead.

      Briefly, silence stretched throughout the crowd. They contemplated the situation, their minds considering. Matthew knew the outcome though. He wouldn’t have ever come up with even a simple thought experiment of this kind, let alone witness a real one first hand. It was the most brutal kind of sexual torture and rape that he could have ever imagined, but it was simple to predict. Either you risk it, or you die anyway.

      And the crowds of people risked it of course. They rushed towards the massive opening, their frail bodies trying to peel the folds of her labia away, trying to get to the treasure inside. But they couldn’t. They were too weak to even manage that, their strength barely being able to handle her colossal womanhood. She laughed at their utterly pathetic efforts, moving her hand and spreading it herself.

      Scores of people immediately streamed inside, one after another filling her without being forced at all. Even in the midst of the ridiculous scene, Matthew’s mind brought out the laws of crowd behaviour that governed such processes. The first ones that went in would never have the chance to get out, pressed by the crowd behind them. They would panic, of course, it must be hell inside, but the slow spread of information towards the back would mean that they would be pushed inside unwillingly until the breaking point and the whole crowd realizes something is wrong.

      And that’s exactly what happened. They filled her completely, tricked by a lie into a dark, hot and humid trap. Once their hunger quelled, panic replaced it. And she didn’t let them out of course. She shut her folds and used the ones on her clitoris to rub herself.

      Matthew could only imagine the dozens of flailing arms and legs pushing against her inner flesh, exciting her nerve-ends, sending thousands of electric impulses coursing through her body that, scanned with a MRI, would light up like a thousand fireworks. But he wouldn’t need that anyway. The erratic spasms that struck her body were enough to indicate her emotional state. Even her hologram had disappeared completely, whatever technology powering it unable to handle the female orgasm.

      For those outside, fear tipped the balance against hunger after the titanic body moved violently to crush some of them against her thighs, having long broken those servicing her clitoris beyond recognition. They ran towards the staircase while her sweat-covered body moved and she stood up on her knees and straddled them, one hand kneading her breasts while the other moved to shed her broken toys serving her clitoris and insert two fingers inside herself.

      As soon as she did, she threw her head back and screamed out loud.

      In those moments while she climaxed, Matthew could only think about what could possibly cause a person to literally kill with her sexual organ, trade dozens of lives of real, living, breathing people, for one orgasm. Sacrificing all their hopes and dreams, all their pasts and future plans, every step they made and every decision they took, only for them to end up being grinded into unrecognizable goo by her spasming love muscles inside her cunt, their entire existence having led to an end serving a brief flare of pleasure.

      Sex, rape and domination were themes that Matthew had dealt with many times throughout many cases, but what he had just witnessed was orders of magnitudes beyond even the most vile act he had ever come across.

      And as she stood up in the aftermath of the massacre, he locked eyes with her while she peeled her death canal open and let the mass of bloodied, broken bodies fall between her legs, causing complete hysteria at her feet. But she didn’t care about them anymore, she only smiled with the corner of her mouth, her eyes never leaving Matthew’s.

      “And?” She said. “Did you like this little demonstration?”

      Matthew simply stared at her for a few moments. He tried to say something at first, but his voice failed him. He had to shut his eyes, take a deep breath and clear his throat heavily before he could speak again. And he only wanted to say one word.

      “Why?”

      “Why?” She raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that what you’re here for?”

      And then the wall blacked out, leaving Matthew stunned in silence.

      Matthew laid face-down on the floor, breathing heavily.

      What just happened? One moment he was resting on his bed, reading an obscure philosophical book from an author he’d never heard of before, the next his entire world shook and he was thrown violently backwards, smashed against the wall behind him. Without any respite, he felt her fingers envelop his body, imprisoning him inside.

      He wasn’t able to judge exactly how long she had walked from the nauseating motions that confused him and from the pain, but he knew it wasn’t too long. He was thrown rather harshly on the ground when she finally released him by sliding him from her palm, momentum causing him to tumble and roll around many times before his body came to rest, utterly unprepared for the pain that followed.

      He had known pain, experiencing some of the most terrible moments in his life because of it, both the physical and the emotional kind. But none compared or even came close to the burst of unbearable torment that engulfed him in that moment, striking through every square inch of his body. The affliction rendered him paralyzed, unable to breathe or even feel anything. He became oblivious to his surroundings, the pain consuming his mind entirely, becoming the sole sovereign of his soul.

      But then it changed, shifted. His mind was barely able to register it, but it felt as if it was pushing from within, surging from the depths of his body, thrusting outwards and striking against his skin. Even through the raging inferno inside, he felt the power, the force that suddenly burst out of every fibre of his body and exploded. He felt it deep within his bones, his flesh and blood, his every nerve. It made the pain flare even more.

      He wanted to die. He wanted it to end. He had never wished for anything more in his life. And like a speck of dust suddenly finding itself within the calm eye of the storm, it really did. His eyes immediately shot open, unable to form a coherent shape out of the light that streamed in their irises, and like a furious tempest suddenly breaking free of its confinement, he let it all out.

      It took a few moments before he realized he was screaming and crying at the top of his lungs, eyes streaming in tears. He finally stopped when he ran out of air, clenching his hands as an alternative instinct of holding on to reality, feeling something soft and bristly underneath his fingernails. A carpet? The first coherent thought came from his mind. He pushed with his hands, senses finally returning, and held himself up temporarily, his blurry vision coalescing into the shape of a good old-fashioned carpet underneath, sweat dripping from his nose. His strength then gave out and he let his torso fall, laying face-down on the floor, breathing heavily.

      What just happened?

      “Quite the intense experience, isn’t it?” Her voice came from somewhere his disoriented mind couldn’t place.

      He mustered his strength again, coming much more easily than he expected, and got up, finally noticing that he was naked. He looked around, seeing leathered chairs, a few bookcases on the edges, a desk in the middle of the room with a sole lamp on it, a window covered in elegant, transparent drapes streaming with light from beyond, though he couldn’t make out any features outside, and abstract pictures covering the rest of the walls. There even was a railing that ran along the square walls of the room a level above, the walls there entirely covered in bookcases.

      He had to look around again before he spotted her sitting on one of the chairs that faced the opposite direction, only part her hair visible which stood in stark contrast against the black leather.

      “Behind you.” She said just before Matthew could speak himself. “You’ll find something to wear there.”

      Matthew looked behind and saw the black suit that hung on one of the cabinets. He stood up, unable to properly understand why he felt the shame that welled up inside of him at the prospect of her seeing him naked. He approached the hanging suit, his body drowning in endorphins. He couldn’t quite believe that he got away unscathed from the experience. The amount of pain simply didn’t match the healthy state of his body, though the memory of the pain was fading as quickly as a dream after having just woken up.

      He slowly dressed in the suit, one of the most classy pieces he’d ever seen. Even the black shoes were phenomenally elegant. After only the tie was left, he took a look on a nearby mirror, hardly believing that he was staring at himself.

      “Do you want help with that?” Her voice came from behind.

      Matthew turned around. She stood in the middle of the room, wearing an incredibly beautiful, blood-red skirt suit that left him breathless. A black shirt underneath her jacket concealed most of her perfect breasts but her upper chest was left open. Her skirt came to her knees while her legs were covered in dark stockings and she wore a pair of marvelously beautiful black high heels that matched the pair of black leather gloves she wore on her hands. Her mesmerizing red hair, which her dress matched so splendidly, was tied in this twisting pattern of graceful buns that hung loosely on the back of her head, and even her overall pose was strikingly seductive, having her left hand wrapped around her stomach just beneath the buttons of her jacket while her right hand held a glass of red wine between her fingers and she leaned slightly on her right leg, bending her opposite hip a little.

      “Matthew?” She said.

      Matthew blinked repeatedly while breaking out of his trance, taking a deep breath. “Uh... what? Help?”

      “With the tie.”

      Matthew looked down on his hands which held the tie he was supposed to wear. He wasn’t a stranger to ties and knew his fair share of knots, but she offered. She offered! He wasn’t about to miss this opportunity. “Sure.”

      She lowered the glass of wine on a nearby table and slowly walked towards him while she took her leather gloves off, placing them on a dresser behind Matthew. But just as she turned towards him, a thought occurred to Matthew, something that he hadn’t realized until now and suddenly made him incredibly anxious.

      “Wait!” He said, his eyes widening. “That… I’m… You’re…”

      “Real?” She said, smiling.

      Matthew only nodded. She was really there? Not just a Hologram? She reached forward with her arm, holding her hand right in front of his face. Matthew held his breath, but instead of thrusting forward and blinding him in colorful light, she turned her hand around, moving her fingers underneath his chin. He closed his eyes, and the sensitive feeling of touch suddenly reverberated from his cheek as she gently stroked it with her thumb. He finally exhaled, a feeling of euphoria engulfing him. She really was there, real. Like a normal human being.

      “Ah, Matt.” She said with a soft voice. “After all the things I made you witness, you still see and fall for this image of a simple woman in me.”

      Matthew immediately shot his eyes open, looking at her radiating green ones. “You are no simple woman. You are as far from that as you could possibly be.”

      She laughed, and took the tie from his hands, proceeding to tie it around his neck. “I am no simple woman. I am no psychopath. I am no god.” She said as she made the first twists and turns on the tie. “You have to make up your mind about me, Matt.”

      “I’m sorry.” He said. “I just can’t find the right words that would describe you.” He let those words out before he considered their cheesy-sounding nature. And she laughed again while causing him to sigh.

      “I suppose I should be flattered?” She said, finalizing the last moves on her knot. “Would a normal girl be?”

      “That was not my intention.”

      “I know it wasn’t.” She said, still smiling while tugging the main band of the tie, making the pattern come together into this beautiful knot that he had never seen before. Then she took a step back and regarded Matthew from top to bottom.

      “Quite the gentleman.” She said as she gestured towards the mirror. Matthew turned and looked at it, looked at himself, but only briefly because her image attracted his eyes like the gravity of a massive, blazing star would on tiny objects in its vicinity.

      “What do you want from me?” He said as he caught her eyes in the mirror.

      She said nothing at first, matching Matthews gaze. Then she moved forwards, towards the dresser and picked her gloves up, wearing them again, and then gestured with a hand towards one of the chairs. “Take a seat.”

      Matthew looked at the chairs that faced each other, sighing, and did just that, turning and walking while she followed, stopping at the table that held her glass of wine, picking it up. As Matthew sat, she moved towards a nearby counter where a bottle of wine stood, its label inscribed with letters he’d never seen before, and picked it too up, turning towards him.

      “Wine?”

      “No, thank you.” He said. “I never really understood the point of intoxication.”

      “Really?” She sounded genuinely surprised. “You have never been drunk before?”

      “Only once, out of curiosity. It’s not something I would want to try again.”

      “Why not?” She said while she poured a little more in her glass. “Do you never feel the need to loosen up your innate moral inhibitions some time?”

      “No.” He said, remembering the one time he did get drunk and what it did to his mind. “Alcohol does not have the same effect on me that it does on other people. But out of curiosity, what kind of moral inhibitions are you trying to suppress?”

      “Fair point.” She said, conceding defeat with a brief smile. “But I do not drink wine to intoxicate myself. This, “ she held up her glass of wine before she took a sip, “is a delightful two thousand year old taste whose nature is difficult to describe in words unless you understand it too.”

      “Anyway.” She put the bottle of wine on the counter and moved to the opposing chair, sitting. “Let’s move on.”

      After she sat, she crossed her left leg over the right one, and then Matthew noticed something moving at her feet. The was a small woman that he hadn’t so far noticed there, scurrying towards the black high heel on her right foot and throwing herself at it as soon as she reached it, licking and lapping at its reflecting surface. She had blonde hair and a fit body, which was about the only thing he could tell about her appearance except the brief moment he saw her tiny sore eyes and tear-laden face before she buried it on the shoe.

      “Meet Irene.” The recipient of the tiny thing’s worship said.

      The little girl though didn’t turn to meet Matthew’s eyes. “I do not think she wants to meet me.”

      “She wouldn’t dare look at you.”

      “Why?”

      “Because she is a slave.” She said. “Slaves are not permitted to look higher beings in the eyes. It’s one of the highest forms of disrespect.”

      “Higher beings?” Matthew let out a genuine laugh. “Me? Right.”

      “Why not?” She said, forming a sly smile on her face before she took another sip of the wine.“ To her, for all intents and purposes, you are. You can crush her under your shoe just as easily as I can, which is exactly what I am going to do to her shortly, anyway.”

      Her words sent a series of cold shivers reverberating through Matthew in that moment. Not just because she made him aware of the unwanted but still intoxicating power he suddenly held over another human, or that she was going to kill her, or even because of the sobs that suddenly erupted at her feet. But also because...

       “She is innocent.” He looked the redheaded, malevolent god in her jade-colored eyes. “Don’t do it, please!”

      “Innocent?” She frowned. “What? How would you know? Why would you even care? You told me you are a killer too, didn’t you?”

      “Yes, I am.” He said with a voice that was a little stronger than he intended. “But I do not kill innocent people. And she is innocent.”

      “Oh. That’s why you care.” She said. “I didn’t know that, I misjudged you. It certainly makes things more interesting. But no, she is not innocent.”

      “What did she ever do?” He asked her, looking down at the girl, still obediently licking away. Besides the tiny girl’s face, in that brief moment before, he had also seen her, his empathic gift had given him an instant insight into her mind. He only needed a split second, judging by the way she held herself, her arms, her slumped shoulders, the defeated look on her face whose dozens of muscles betrayed every tint of the underlying dark emotions that dominated her mind.

      “That look of yours… ” Her voice broke his train of thoughts. He looked up at her. “It’s very intriguing. Tell me, what do you see in her?”

      “I see someone that doesn’t deserve to die like that!” He said with a firm voice.  “I see this little, shy girl barely out of her teenage years that must have been suddenly thrown into this violent world of a redheaded god, without any reason or explanation, utterly unprepared for it. I see this innocent human being that has been robbed of the best years of her life, downtrodden into absolute obedience, beaten, humiliated and made to serve superfluous acts for the sole purpose of pleasing said god’s inner dark urges and twisted sense of amusement far beyond her understanding.

      I see someone’s daughter who will never get to see her family and friends ever again, someone who will never get to see the world again, experience it, its joys and delights. A young woman that will never get to know unconditional love or receive it and will never know the feeling of being a parent. I see a soul that has been battered, stained and corrupted by death of the most gruesome kind that surrounded her daily, her mind always on the edge of the abyss of madness. And now she is proverbially digging her own grave. What has she ever done to deserve that?”

      She didn’t respond, but only looked at him… no, not at him. Her eyes, they were pointed at him, but they were unfocused, as if looking somewhere behind him. He immediately understood. She was in another place, another time, her mind imagining something that wasn’t here or now, perhaps recalling something out of the depths of her memories. He must have managed to trigger something deep inside of her because for all the struggle that he faced while trying to read her, he could quite clearly see the pain behind the veil of her unreadable expression that she managed to wear so often. But it disappeared quickly as her eyes focused back on him.

      “Remarkable.” She said. “You could see all that just by looking at her?”

      “She is easy to read.” He said. “Makes the parts that you have to guess easy to do.”

      She nodded, then appeared to remember something and looked down towards where Irene would be, though she couldn’t see her beneath the slope of the chair. Matthew followed her gaze and saw that Irene had stopped her worship, looking towards him with her weary face, but still keeping her eyes down on the ground.

      “Ah, look!” Her goddess said. “You have managed to instill hope in her. How rude of you.”

      Irene suddenly broke out of her trance, scared, and hastily moved to continue her worship, but she was given no chance. The foot moved inescapably fast, slamming her sideways and flicking her to the ground before it settled on top of her startled body, the flat surface of the shoe’s underside pinning her down.

      “And as to your question.” She said as she met Matthews eyes again. “It’s simple. She has looked me in the eyes when she was not told to do so, and now she will die because of that.”

      Then the screams broke out. Matthew looked at Irene again as she struggled beneath the increasing pressure of the immovable foot that was slowly crushing her, desperately fighting against it with her tiny arms.

      “You don’t care, do you?” He said, looking up at her again. “You were just looking for an excuse, something to make this more that just a random kill.” Her only response was to take another sip from the wine, still maintaining her sly smile. “All this time, I had thought that all of us that found ourselves at your mercy were people that deserved to be in this place. Even though I had seen too much to believe that it was true, I still maintained the belief that all of us had, at some point in their lives, done something that was unforgivable. That man who swore like an idiot, that young kindergarten teacher, even those people you killed in your cunt. I thought that none of them were innocent, that we all deserved to die. But you just don’t care. In fact, you seem to enjoy it even more.”

      Again, she said nothing, her response this time being an increased pressure on Irene who broke into cringing cries of desperation and hopelessness as bones started breaking, the pain becoming unbearable. Then she leaned forward, elbows on her knees, and watched as she started rolling her tortured toy around on the wooden floor.

      “Innocence, ” She said, her face suddenly becoming firm, serious, “is one big lie. No human is ever innocent, not even a little child. Once they grow out of the protective shell of infancy, once they become capable of reason, once they discover their abilities, they start to lie, to deceive, to bully. You just have to give them permission, or even just the means, and they show no remorse.”

      Irene’s voice had grown cracked from the constant screaming and turned into pleas of mercy after some of her limbs had bent awkwardly, her entire body being limply rolled around now after her puny strength gave away.

      “Let alone adults.” She continued, rolling her little plaything around one final time before she settled her tortured body on her back and let it rest in enormous pain for a few moments. “You can transform whomever you like into killing machines. You can turn people that would have never hurt a fly into soldiers heeding your every command, loving fathers and mothers into genocide perpetrators, innocent lovers into torture-enjoying monsters.”

      She stood up, settling her feet to the side of the broken Irene, and looked Matthew in the eyes. “You just need to do one thing and one thing only: Take the responsibility from them.”

      “I don’t believe you.” Matthew shook his head. “No. Some you can, but not everyone, no way. You can’t just take an innocent child that never meant harm to anyone and turn it into a violent monster.”

      She sighed deeply, as if annoyed by Matthews apparent naivety. Then she spread her arms wide, holding her palms upwards, and said: “Here stands your living, breathing proof that it can.”

      Matthew suddenly held his breath. It was the first time she said something about her, about who she was, about her past. His mind was now flooded with this eerie feeling about her that made him see her for more than this dangerous entity with godly powers. Now he saw a person, a woman, someone with a story.

      “But I can’t fault you.” She continued, catching onto Matthews astonished expression. “You haven’t seen or witnessed the things that I have. There is so much that you don’t know about the world, about the universe, you’re basically a child when it comes to such matters.”

      Then she shifted her gaze down onto the wailing and whimpering Irene. “Anyway, time to put her out of her misery.” She crouched down and held a hand above Irene, spreading her palm wide. Matthew watched as somehow, she affected Irene, her small body buckling a little despite the damage, and most remarkably, the screaming stopped.

      “You like it, don’t you?” She said to her. Matthew could see Irene’s head nod ever so slightly. “The blissful nature of painless existence. Rarily does anyone know how fortunate most of them are not to know true pain. But you are dead, your body is broken, shattered beyond saving. All I can offer you now is the mercy of a quick death.”

      Then she retreated her hand, and the screaming renewed, suffering that was drilling a hole into Matthew’s mind.

      “You can live for a few more hours like this.” She said. “Or I can put you out of your misery, but only if you kiss my foot one more time and show me your devotion. It is your choice.”

      The red goddess then returned to her earlier demeanor, striking this pose of a divine being, uncaring of the suffering at her feet. She demanded sacrifice in return for her mercy and expected nothing less than total obedience, even though she offered a choice. With only the slightest hint of a tilted head to watch her slave do her bidding, she placed her right foot a mere step away from the broken form of Irene, and waited.

      At first, Matthew couldn’t see any decisiveness on Irene’s part, she just continued to cry and plead. But then, with a renewed vigor in both her motions and screams, she managed to turn her body around, laying face down. Reaching with her relatively uninjured right arm forward, she dragged herself against the wooden floor, using her left knee as support. Her left foot was badly shattered and her other two limbs were useless, but she still found the strength to do it. The pain must have been unbearable but she still moved forward with her snail-like pace in spite of it, leaving a trail of blood behind her body and screaming furiously with each drag, continuing her path towards the very being who did this to her so that she could simply kiss her foot.

      And she managed to do it. She reached her goddess’s foot, trembling violently as she pushed herself up on one arm, and planted a kiss on the polished surface of the high heel before collapsing on back the floor, crying ‘Please!’ over and over again.

      “Good.” The goddess said, smiling down at Irene. “Obedient, ready to serve even through all the pain. You deserve my mercy.” And with that, she moved her shoe over her, placing the long, slim heel above Irene’s head, and unceremoniously pressed down, crushing and popping it like a grape.

      There was a brief moment where she was lost in her thoughts after she killed her, but with a deep breath, she quickly shifted her thoughts elsewhere and looked at Matthew whose gaze was still fixed at her shoe.

      “Shall we begin?” She said, catching his attention.

      “But before we begin, ” Matthew said, “I have to know who exactly is the patient in this therapy, and who is the psychiatrist?”

      “Interesting question.” She said, smiling and taking another sip from the glass of wine. “I suppose we will have to find out in the process?”

      Matthew shifted his gaze down at her crossed legs, right one over the left. There, leaning against the left leg, was a small woman that sat quietly on the floor with legs bent sideways. It was the same one he had seen on the first day, the one that was used as a human toilet. She was still the same height, barely three feet tall, and still wore that melancholic expression. She had been called to clean the remains of Irene and after she was done, she was ordered to stand idly by her master while a hand stroked her hair in pet-like fashion.

      She was different from the rest, obviously. Special in some way to the redhead. Matthew wondered if he too was going to end up in a similar position, broken and entirely submissive after she’ll be done with him.

       “I still don’t understand exactly what it is that you want from me.” He said as he shifted his gaze back up again.

       “Just to talk.” She said. “I can sense that you have a different view towards the world compared to most normal people. You see things differently, you understand them differently. Though I am a little surprised by your views on innocence, I would have never thought that you wouldn’t see it for the lie that it is.”

       Just to talk. Matthew thought. No, it’s not just that. You want something more. But that something still eluded him.

       “It’s not a lie.” Matthew said, turning his head towards the window, squinting at the bright, formless light that streamed inside. “It’s an idea. Ideas cannot be true or false, they just are. Me and you, we just view it differently, like looking at a coin if one of us were to hold one up right now. You would be able to see one side, I the other, but never both sides at the same time. It’s the same with innocence. You believe that every human harbors evil within them, and you just have to draw it forth, while I believe that it’s innocence that you have to purge instead.”

       “Why?” She said. “Why your way and not mine?”

       “Because I’ve seen what happens when innocence is purged, the coldness inside. It’s not evil, far from it. It’s just… emptiness.”

       “Different views indeed.” She said. She seemed to be enjoying this conversation, but it was obvious to Matthew that he would never be able to persuade her on this matter. “Tell me, am I… cold?”

       “First I had my question and your answer.” He said. “Then I answered your question. It’s my turn now.”

       “Ah, a game of questions.” She said before she took another sip from the glass and then put it down on a small table nearby. “I suppose it’s only fair. Ask away.”

       “What is your name?”

       Her smile – the slight, confident, almost arrogant way she kept her lips drawn back so often, radiating this sense of superiority all around her – faded instantly. Matthew grew tense, but then her eyes fell off their gaze, transported into the otherworldly realm of memories. She really didn’t seem to like being reminded of her past, Matthew observed.

       “It’s funny, ” she said, still in the same state, “I’ve seen so many different reactions, so many different thoughts racing within their tiny heads when they see me for the first time. Fear, terror, awe and sometimes even tears of joy. They scream, they beg, they pray, or simply remain silent, stunned, unable or unknowing how to react. Questions follow, they ask me who I am, where they are, what I want from them, what I did to them.

       It becomes boring after a while, so I simply show them who I am. And that’s how I become just her. I don’t need a name by that point. I become the center of their world, their entire universe. They never ask me for my name afterwards, and even those titles like goddess, master, highness and such are of their own conceiving. I don’t order them to address me like that, they simply do it on their own. They learn to obey, to submit and to worship on their own. Human nature is like that, it’s designed to be submissive, to be ruled by higher powers.”

       She met his eyes again. “And for that reason, very few individuals know my name in this place, but one of them is my little childhood friend here.”

       Childhood friend? It was weirdly difficult for Matthew to imagine her having a childhood, but the friend part certainly seemed sarcastic to him, given how she treated the brunette.

       “Tell him.” She said. “What is my name.”

       The brunette seemed confused at first, unsure of whether it was a trick of some sort. It looked like she was really afraid to call the redhead by her name, as if it incurred heavy punishment, which perhaps it usually did, Matthew thought. She looked up, afraid to meet her master’s eyes but in terrible need of reassurance. The redhead only noded.

       “Her… her name is Laeiamaia.” She said as turned towards Matthew, who now in turn looked confused at the weird-sounding name. “It means red flower in our language. But everyone ever called her simply Maia, short for red.”

       “Maia…” Matthew said softly. ”I can live with that.”

       “So, there you have it, Matt.” Maia said, her characteristic smile returning.

      “I guess I’ll have to answer your question now, Maia.” He said, smiling back awkwardly. “So, are you cold on the ins-”

      “No.” She interrupted him. “Since we’re playing this game, let me be more specific. Profile me.”

      “Uh, ok.” Matthew shifted in his seat, gathering his thoughts. He had thought about it a lot in the past few days, and really wasn’t sure how to approach it best.

      “No, you are not a psychopath.” He said. Maia retreated her arm from her pet and crossed it over her left one, listening intently. “Nor are you a sociopath, which is basically the same thing, there is no difference between the two. You might seem like one and you definitely display some trains of a antisocial personality disorder within which psychopathy can be described to some extent, but you display some traits that rule you out.

      “You see, “ he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and joined his fingertips together while holding his hands under his chin, concentrating, “ psychopaths are callous and lack empathy, their emotions are very shallow, they are unable to accept responsibility over their actions, they are insincere, overconfident, selfish and most importantly, impulsive, which usually leads to unplanned violence they’re so famous for.

      But you, no.” He shook his head, smirking like a child. “Though you certainly are callous, you don’t lack empathy. Psychopaths don’t know what emotion is, but you certainly do. And I feel that you would be insulted if someone took responsibility and credit over your actions. You know very well what you are doing, you are meticulous and blunt in your actions and you plan them with pure calmness. There is nothing insincere about the way you wordlessly manipulate those people into forfeiting their lives… that’s not the hallmark of a psychopath, no. You need to be able to read people, judge them and their behaviour very well in order to do so, which violent psychopaths are incapable of.”

      Matthew reclined in his seat again, pausing briefly. “What you really are, it’s intrinsically linked with your MO.”

      Maia remained silent for a few moments. Then she moved to take her glass again and drank the remaining wine. “MO?”

      “Modus Operandi - Method of Operation.” Matthew said. “It’s unique for every killer, like a fingerprint. It can be a simple thing, like always lighting a cigarette before the deed, and it can be the very way you do it. But it almost always emerges as a result of the fundamental reason for why one kills. Psychopaths do it because they want to feel something, anything. You on the other hand… it’s a bit difficult to put your MO into context.”

      “Why?” She said, though she obviously wasn’t being serious. “Is my MO so difficult to comprehend?”

      “Difficult? No.” Matthew smiled back sarcastically. “But let me put it this way, if I had to do a profiling on your case at my job, it would look like this read something like this:

      Subject is female, a serial killer borderlining a mass murderer, main suspect related to the deaths of hundreds of people. Prefered MO: Shrinking them down and using her body as a murder weapon, especially her sex organs which indicate sexual motivations. She usually does it by either manipulate her victims into doing it willingly - though never without a large amount of fear and terror within their psyche - or by making sure they know their situation is hopeless before she kills them.

      Mentally she displays features of narcissistic personality disorder, though not entirely. She appears to be in need of being thought of as infallible, unbreakable, invincible, indomitable, formidable and inviolable. She displays traits of being intransigent when status is questioned, over-reactive to slights and basic traits of Megalomania such as delusional fantasies of power, relevance, omnipotence, and inflated self-esteem.

      But her mental traits need to be reviewed more closely for two reasons. One is that she really does display features of incredible power that do not appear to be a mere fantasy, perhaps consequently rendering her narcissistic features as natural. It is difficult to say because there are no previous cases of similar nature and it is difficult to predict the behavior of a person that holds so much palpable power over others. Further study needs to be done on the subject.

      The second reason is that she appears to keep some of her victims alive and treats them vastly different from all others. The reasons for that are so far unclear. Superficially, she appears to treat one of them - a male - for entertainment purposes, using him as an audience for her deeds and appearing to respect his opinion on the matter. But there are hints of deeper motivations, though as already stated, so far they remain unclear.

      Nothing is known about her past, but there are indications of a traumatic experience during her childhood which are deeply embedded within her memory, affecting her conscience. So far it is difficult to understand how it could have lead to her becoming who she is without more information.

      And the nature of her powers also remains unclear, the best and only guess is some form of advanced technology that has been so far kept secret from the world. Again, more information is needed.

      “There you have it, your Profile. And if someone had put a such a file in my desk, I would have thought them mad.”

      Maia said nothing, but simply looked at Matthew with her vivid green eyes, blinking occasionally. He absolutely hated it when she took on this expression that made it terribly difficult to read. Where did she learn to do that? The only clue about her mental state right now was the slow tapping of the empty glass, which she still held on her hand, with her index finger. Usually it would indicate nervousness or boredom, but in her case it indicated a state of being deep in thoughts.

      But then she gestured forward with her hand. “Your turn.”

      Matthew frowned. “What? That’s all you’ve got to say?”

      “I said, “ she looked at him sternly. “It’s your turn.”

      Matthew was taken aback. That horrendous feeling of having disappointed her somehow crept up on him. And the worst part was that he couldn’t tell what he did wrong, it could have been anything he had said in the past few minutes, or everything. Thousands of thoughts suddenly raced within his head but he needed to focus, to get a question out of him. And amidst all the chaos in his mind, he picked up something curious he had seen earlier.

      “That… that thing you did with your hand earlier.” He said with a stressed voice. “What was that?”

      She nodded ever so slightly, apparently satisfied with Matthew’s inquiry. She then got up and moved towards the counter with the bottle of wine. “This place, it has a lot interesting technology to play with.” She placed the glass next to it and picked the bottle up, looking at it. “Like the hologram. Manipulating light is very easy to do, creating illusions to the mind of the naive or ignorant is very easy.”

      Then she put the bottle down, and instead waved her hand a single time against the window, making the light beyond dim and then completely disappear, revealing a metallic surface behind the window. The room suddenly went from giving Matthew a feeling of being this beautiful office of a psychiatrist to one that sort of looked like a room deep within a bunker.

      “But this is not technology.” She said as she turned around, looked at Matthew briefly before her eyes continued towards her brunette friend, holding a hand stretched out towards her. The girl’s eyes immediately shot wide open and an expression of horror filled her face.

      “Please, goddess! Please! I beg you! What have I done to deserve it?” She screamed out, pleadingly jumping to her feet towards Maia.

      But then her body went limp in an instant and fell on the floor like a rag doll, her face flatly lined against the wood, facing Matthew. She lost control over it, but Matthew could almost see through, and he thought he saw pain, reminding him of something. But to his horror, her skin suddenly began to shift, move along itself. Her body started twitching violently as the skin formed mesmerizing patterns that began to disappear into nothingness like black holes swallowing stars. Then her whole body began to shrink, slowly losing mass in a way that was too difficult for Matthew to comprehend. Her limbs, her torso, her head, even her hair began to be displaced by emptiness, sort of disintegrating and reintegrating into the same thing, but smaller. Then the process picked up pace and the brunette grew smaller and smaller until she was a mere half of an inch tall before she stopped shrinking and whatever had taken control over her disappeared.

      Then she broke out into a terrible scream.

      Matthew was barely able to hear her, but she instantly recognized it. It was the same scream he had let out earlier. It was the same pain. He was left stunned, shocked at what he had just witnessed. Not just the way it happened, but the very idea of having so much control over someone utterly horrified him, reaffirming his fear even after all that he had seen Maia do.

      “No.” She said while she began to walk towards the shrunken girl. “This is far more than that. This is what separates mere mortals from gods.” Her next step would reach the girl, and she arched it high up, stretching her skirt to its limit. The little girl held her arms up instinctively, but she looked utterly insignificant beneath Maia’s shadow, hopeless in every possible way.

      “This, is true power.” Maia said and brought her foot down with furious strength. The little girl would have been completely obliterated weren’t it for the fact that Maia aimed just to her side. Instead, the force that escaped from Maia’s foot resonated through the air beside the brunette and flung her several dozens of feet on the opposite side from her perspective. She hit the ground hard, but afterwards she looked like she was still alive, though injured in several spots.

      Maia’s gaze lingered upon the tiny girl for several more moments before she took a deep breath and looked at Matthew. “I think it’s enough for today, doctor. Wouldn’t you think so?”

      Matthew still was too stunned to react. But when she stretched the her arm towards him the very same way, he jerked out his emotional confine.

      “No!” Was all he had managed to say before that awful pain overtook him.

      The panel shifted, disappearing into the side wall and Maia entered the room. The walls of the room had been programmed to display faint, star-like dots recursively, giving the room an eerie look, like being suspended in the middle of an infinite expanse of space. The panel reappeared and the door shut as she walked towards a nearby chair. She took off her red dress, throwing it carelessly on the chair and loosened her red hair. Then, with only bra and panties on, she jumped on the bed, stretching her body and relieving the tension on her muscles.

      That’s when she remembered, and smiled broadly. She stood up again and moved to a nearby table on the corner of the room. Placed on it, was a small, purely black box. It was so dark that you wouldn’t be able see its edges even if you put a flashlight on it. But when Maia ran her hand over it, the box grew transparent and the darkness disappeared, revealing a small man inside, about four inches long, laying on the floor. He immediately reacted against the sudden blinding light that filled his vision, shielding his eyes.

      “Maia?” He said, unable to see anything. “Is that you?”

      She said nothing. “Please! Maia! Tell me that’s you!” He held his head down, eyes still adjusting, searching all around him. After a few frantic turns, he spotted Maia’s huge frame, and slowly arched his head up, eyes squinting in pain. But he was determined, and when he finally spotted her looming form, he cried.

      “Maia!” He screamed through his tears. “Why are you doing this to me? Why are you keeping me trapped inside this horrible hell?” He reached forward, throwing a fist against the transparent wall of the box. “Maia please! I have forgotten how time itself feels! Please!”

      Maia enjoyed his desperate pleas for a few more moments before she moved her hand towards him. It entirely ignored the wall of the box, passing through it without a reaction and grabbed the shrunken man, taking him with her on the bed.

      There, she threw him carelessly between her thighs and then relaxed, waiting for him to regain his composure. When he did, he immediately ran towards her panty-clad crotch and threw his arms against them.

      “Please!” He screamed again. “Maia please! I love you. Why are you doing this to me? Why are you punishing me like this? What have I done to deserve this?”

      He tried grabbed the threads of the panties, and tried to climb up but a sudden flick from a finger that had emerged out of nowhere sent him tumbling back on the sheets between her titanic thighs.

      “Why?” He cried, and made his way towards her panties again. “I love you. And you thought you did too! I don’t understand!” He started kissing the spot where her sex would be, but Maia wouldn’t give him the true honor.

      “Talk to me Maia!” He said, running his hands against her panties. “Be merciful, for once!”

      But she remained silent, letting him suffer a little more. “Please!” He begged over and over again. “I will do anything! Absolutely anything, just… say something!”

      “Anything?” She finally said.

      His eyes suddenly shot wide open. “Anything!” He screamed immediately. “Yes! I will do anything! I promise by my own soul! Just let me!”

      “So deluded.” She said, chuckling. “You still think you have any sort of freedom like you used to. As if the last month spent in total darkness hasn’t taught you anything.” But before he could react, she clasped her thighs together, trapping his little body between their silky flesh and her panties. She held his twitching body there for some time until his strength gave out.

      “But hey, one last wish.” She said as she released him. He fell on the the sheets again, gasping for air. She rose up, regarding his pathetic body through her thigh gap for a moment before she grabbed him by one leg and got up, walking towards the bathroom. “I think you deserve it.”

      When he finally regained his composure for a second time, he found himself surrounded by her thighs yet again, but the surface beneath was white plastic, and her torso loomed above him. There was also a gap between where he stood and her crotch, an abyss that descended into darkness. That’s when it clicked in his mind and he started shaking his head, repeating “No, no no!” again and again.

      “You can’t do this to me Maia!” His tears came back. He looked up, looked her in the eyes. “You just can’t!”

      She raised her eyebrows, a small laugh escaping her lips, but said nothing. Instead, the sound of streaming liquid emanated from the gap between her thighs, catching his attention, fear and shock replacing his tears.

      “I never loved you, you pathetic idiot.” She said between the flowing strands of red hair that hung from her head while she looked down on the little patch of the toilet seat. “I actually surprised you thought so, I didn’t think I could pull it off, but you gave in so easily, practically melted when I flirted with you, made you special feel special and different from the others.”

      He looked flabbergasted. His entire world just shattered, unable to believe it, unable to believe any of it. And she loved it, barely able to believe the easiness of it herself. He dropped down on his knees, shoulders slumped, shaking his head constantly. “I can’t be, it simply can’t!”

      “I almost feel sorry for you.” She gave him a condescending smile. “But now that there’s another man, I think it’s… oh!” His face, it suddenly lit up unlike anything before, it was the saddest sight she had seen in a long time, and it made her laugh loudly. “Oh my… I can almost literally see your heart shattering into pieces! This was worth every torturous second of our relationship!”

      She stretched her arms out wide as her laugh calmed, and when she looked back down, she found his little form lying on the plastic, curled up like a little child and crying even more than before, mumbling something to himself in between sobs. She let him, instead she concentrated on another force of nature. He immediately reacted when he heard the sound of something big and heavy splashing on the water beneath. He looked up at her with a horror-stricken face, but she only winked back. He somewhat surprised her when he suddenly stood up, ran towards the opposite edge of the toilet seat and let himself fall.

      “Oh, no you don’t!” She caught him in mid air. “I won’t let you die that easy. You gave me a promise, remember? Time to fulfill it.”

      She swiftly moved her hand between her thighs, took a moment to adjust his screaming body, and then wiped the shit from her asshole with him, muffling his screams in the process. She closed her eyes, gasping from the softness and warmth of the feeling, remembering to try this sometime again.

      Then he let his coughing body fall on the cold, piss-filled water, though he hit the turd first. When he emerged on the surface, Maia swore he screamed worse than some she had burned alive. Another couple of wipes with real toilet paper and she was done. She stood back up, put her panties on and stood silently for a moment, listening to his screams and pleas, catching her name within them.

      “If, “ she said, cutting his screams abruptly, “ there is one type of you little shits I truly despise, then it’s pedophiles.”

      Then she waved her hand and the toilet flushed automatically, transporting him somewhere within a deep, entirely dark container where he lived for many more hours in the midst of her bone-filled excrements before he drowned. And still, for a pedophile, he could have counted himself lucky.

      Once again, Matthew found himself tumbling out of her hand and dumped into a hard surface.

      Maia was already heading somewhere when he managed to regain his bearings. Looking around, he found himself to be in some kind of a personal gym. There were all sorts of modern equipment around, and even a punchbag in the middle of the room. He was standing on top of a counter of some sorts, devoid of any objects bar a dark, rectangular box to his right.

      But his eyes couldn’t ignore her for long. He didn’t know what it was with those workout leggings that women wear, but he swore that they made their legs look heavenly beautiful. And that’s saying something for Maia herself considering her natural beauty. Perhaps it was because of the dark material providing not much more than an outline of the shape, blocking out any other distracting features that the eye might perceive, or perhaps they just did something else to their legs, but he could not get his eyes away.

      Especially not after she started working out.

      It was quite a sight to see her massive body move so fast and with such raw power. She first warmed up on a treadmill, then lightly worked various muscles before she proceeded with the punchbag. And only a couple of minutes with it was enough for Matthew to know that she would put quite a fight against him on a fair level even though he was quite the martial artist.

      The way she punched and kicked the bag though, the style was entirely alien to him and something he had never seen before. Another one of those points he had to add to the large mental list of weird things he had seen so far in this place.

      He watched for quite some time, he had to anyway. He wondered what it would mean if she displayed such excessive force against shrunken people. He imagined the strikes of her hands beating against a small, weak body of some unfortunate guy stuck on the surface of the punchb-

      Then he noticed the faint traces blood on it. He shivered at the thought of someone having indeed experienced the very same fate he just imagined.

      He was left to his thoughts for many more minutes, perhaps half an hour. He couldn’t think much about anything but her. She captured his imagination in every conceivable way. This mysterious woman with her flowing red hair, now tucked in a ponytail and damp from sweat. This goddess whose ways both awed and terrified him at the same time. This heavenly angel come forth from the deepest pits of hell. He could go on with purple-prose descriptions all day when it came to her.

      After some time, when her skin was pouring sweat and glistened, she paused with heavy breath and looked towards him. But not at him directly, she looked at the black box to his side. She slowly made her way towards the box, gave Matthew a wink and a playful smile before she ran her hand above the box. It suddenly became transparent.

      There were people inside, dozens of them. And they were much smaller than Matthew, perhaps one fourth of his size. They were sprawled inside, hunched down on the surface or laying on it entirely, resting.

      “Say hello to your friends, Matt.” She said between breaths.

      “My friends?”

      “Yes.” Her breathing was getting calmer. “Take a closer look, they can’t see you.”

      Indeed. It’s like they didn’t notice Maia’s massive frame looming above them. He approached the box slowly, feeling the heat radiating from her body, but his eyes firmly set on the people in front of him, separated by an almost invisible wall. Only when he was close enough to touch the glass-like surface did he know what she meant by friends. They were the group he was brought to this place with.

      “What are they doing? Can’t they see you either?”

      “They can’t see or hear anything from the outside. That’s about to change though.”

      She hovered her hand above the box again, and was about to swipe when-

      “Wait!” Matthew shouted.

      She glanced at him, slightly annoyed. “What?”

      “Listen.” He said with a shaky voice, and walked to the front of the box, facing it with Maia behind him. “I won’t pretend that I can stop you from doing whatever it is that you want to do with them, so at least let me watch them, study them.”

      “Huh?” She raised an eyebrow. “Study them? How?”

      “Humans react. To everything. It’s what we are designed to do. And each one has his or her own way of doing that, an own view of the world. But most never get to experience every spectrum and intimate detail of human emotions because we don’t get to experience every imaginable situation in our lives. We can fake emotions from the outside, but not entirely, and especially not from the inside. So, if I can’t do anything about whatever it is that you want to do with them, at least I can watch their reactions to a situation most of them have until very recently thought to be impossible.”

      “And what reaction would that be?” She asked, rhetorically of course.

      But Matthew turned to look at her and still obliged her with an answer: “It’s a special kind of fear. I like to call it Theophobia.”

      She regarded him for a few moments, then smiled down at him before she shifted her eyes at the box and proceeded to swipe her hand above it.

      Indeed, it was a special kind of fear. Matthew turned and looked them in the faces as their craned their heads up, squinting at first from the streaming bright light from outside before their eyes adapted and beheld the gigantic sight of the woman of their nightmares. But they didn’t see her as a monster. No, it was different.

      The fear in their expressions betrayed a hint of reverence, just as she told him so. Deep inside, they saw her as higher being, perhaps the religious equivalent of a divinity bent on punishing them for their sins. It was like they accepted her having the right to torment them.

      Naive idiots, he thought. It seemed to him that he was the only one who knew and understood what their one and only ultimate sin was: That of merely being a human.

      A gigantic hand lowered, screaming erupted. She removed the transparent lid of the box, but she didn’t lower it in afterwards, instead she grabbed it by its side and lifted it. Matthew turned to see what she was doing, and saw her other hand tugging the elastic band of her leggings forward.

      “Enjoy the ride.” She said, then tilted the box.

      Matthew shivered once more. They could not hold onto the slippery surface of the glassy surface, and so they fell, still screaming, one after one into the dark, hot, humid abyss of her nethers.

      Then she released the band, snapping her leggings back and trapping dozens inside. Matthew could clearly see the squirming bulges on the dark material, and could also faintly hear their pleadings. But he could only imagine the conditions inside, being forced against a sweat-laden skin while it released unbearable amounts of heat. Especially at the large bulge against her sex, the damp patch indicating copious amounts of sweat and sexually scented juices washing over the mass of struggling humanity.

      Maia pinched that spot as she bit her lower lip, tugging it forward and then gently massaging it back, spreading the warm bodies all around her crotch and letting many fall down and back against the crack of her buttocks before she let the elastic material snap back yet again.

      Then she went back to her exercising.

      Running, weight lifting, punching and kicking the bag. More sweat, more heat, the whole routine again, but only with a mass of wriggling humanity strapped within her leggings. Matthew had to watch it all over again. Her ways of torment never ceased to amaze and terrify him at the same time. And at the end of her routine, there was stretching.

       She stretched her hands first in different positions, releasing the tension out of them, then clapped them together like being in prayer, closed her eyes, and slid her legs horizontally apart in a slow manner, lowering her body towards the ground.

      Matthew could almost feel the pain, and he could clearly see the pleasure she obtained. Her breathing slowed, but grew deeper, she stopped midway from the ground, her hands parted and one of them moved and pressed a bulge against where her clitoris would be, and she gasped. Then she continued lowering, and Matthew thought that, ironically, the safest spot would be inside her sex at that point.

      A foot from the ground, she paused again, her well-trained legs keeping her in position effortlessly. She opened her eyes, looked at Matthew with a sly smile, and lowered down in one swift motion.

      “Uh…” She moaned. “I think I broke a lot of them this time.”

      Matthew said nothing.

      She rose up again and did some more stretching before she grabbed a bottle of water and glanced at him. Her gaze lingered on his form for a while as she drank out of the bottle, judging him perhaps, or deciding to finally have or way with him, it was always difficult to tell with her. And it was impossible to remain calm and composed when a being of such difference in scale and power brought its attention down upon you.

      Its, he thought. Great. He hated how at times he formed this genderless concept of her on his mind, just like gods were and what she pretended to be, playful or not.

      Then she turned and walked towards him. He took a few steps back in instinct, he could never help it when she did that. In a few swift steps, she was right in front of the counter, and placed her arms to his sides, leaning forward and resting on them.

      She surrounded him, dominated him, made him feel even smaller and helpless. The massive mounds of her breasts protruding against her tank top hung right above him, and a few drops of sweat fell here and there, but the most distinct feature of her presence was the sudden wave of heat washing over him. Her exercising generated colossal amounts of it and at his size, the effect she had on the air around her body was especially noticeable.

      “This is what I don’t get.” She said. “You’ve seen me kill. You’ve seen me take lives simply because I can. You’ve seen me cause fear, pain and humiliation. You’ve seen me use people in the most degrading ways. And even now, you know I’ve stuffed dozens within my pants. They have to endure the darkness, the heat, the mixed scent of my sweat and cum, the soaking blood of the dead surrounding them. They crawl around my privates, and if you listen closely, you can their shrill screams of pain from those with too many broken bones. Some trapped within my cunt, begging for mercy while slowly drowning, suffocating. And all of it only brings me pleasure.”

      She crouched down, resting her chin on the counter, stacked her hands in front of her head, and looked at him with her menacing green eyes like a true deity. “Yet still, you don’t resent me. Why?”

      Matthew only lowered his head in response, and she chuckled.

      “See?” She said. “It’s like you’re ashamed that you don’t hate me.”

      “I don’t know!” He shouted, immediately regretting his outburst. “I don’t know why. Ok? It’s not like I can make sense of my emotions automatically. I’ve been born with this innate ability to read people well, especially their emotions, but most of the time I didn't understand why they feel that way, and why their emotions reflected the way they did on me. In fact, I only understood that others weren’t like me in my early teens. I’ve had to train myself my whole life to make sense of it afterwards.”

      At that moment, a sudden burst of curious courage engulfed him, and he took a step forward, then another, and then he found himself walking towards the gargantuan face. His heart beat rapidly as he approached her hands, being that it was the first physical act he did without her consent. He was sure any other one would have been a stain by the time they reached and rested a hand against her skin the way he did right then and there. But he knew she wouldn’t do that to him, not yet. And the tangible feeling of touch was a very effective way of transforming her image back to a human being within his mind.

      He looked up, needing to shift his head back and forth to be able to see both her eyes which were now crossed, giving him this weird feeling of being watched by two separate beings, and also feeling the shifting air arounding him by her now calmed breathing through her nose. But the otherwise lack of motion from her encouraged him.

      “Somehow… ” He said, pausing briefly while trying to formulate coherent words out of his thoughts. “I feel like there is a very good reason not to resent you. I don’t know what that reason is exactly, but the feeling is there. You reflect on me in a similar manner as people who don’t even flinch when people get killed in movies, but shed tears when dogs, cats or other animals do.”

      Then he saw it, the small twitches in her eyes, his perception amplified multiple times by his smaller size compared to the vastness of her face. He must have triggered memories, again. He was onto something, and so he continued.

      “For some reason, you have removed yourself from having any sort of feelings towards humans. Where normal people have within themselves this innate ability to be less selfish with each other than many animals, you have shed that trait completely. You don’t care if someone is in pain, sorrow, or despair and you won’t try to help unless it somehow benefits you. You don’t empathize, you don’t relate, you just take. I don’t know why you became this way, but if I had to guess, someone betrayed you and hurt you badly when you were young, perhaps even a child. That much you said it yourself in our session.”

      She still listened, her silence inviting him to keep on going.

      “But in that removal, you found something. Unhindered by the burden of empathy and exponentially amplified through whatever this ability to control the size of others is, you came to know just how good the feeling of power felt.

      So you abuse it. You induce terror, pain, and grief in you victims because you can and because you think humans deserve it. Maybe they do, I don’t know, but you are not cold inside, you have just surrounded yourself with a barrier of ice. It’s the only way you can forget whatever it is that you are trying to bury. And that’s why I don’t hate you. You are lost, but not a lost cause.”

      She suddenly stood up, a blowing rush of winds forcing him to back off as her body, previously hidden by the slope of the counter, became so indescribably immense again.

      “And what are you going to do about it?” She said down to him as if mocking him considering the vast difference in power.

      “I… “ he looked up, unsure how to respond.

      Then her lips formed a warm smile, and she stretched a palm against the counter. “Come, I want to show you something.”

      Matthew looked at the palm. Something didn’t feel right, but he only knew what after he made himself climb on it: It was the first time she didn’t outright grab him, but instead invited him to climb on her hand. Was she starting to care?

      “But first, “ she said after she started walking, “I need to clean myself. Especially the mess I made down below.”

         Maia stepped inside the shower, still fully clothed, and placed a wholly undressed Matthew on the rim of the flat tub at her feet.

         She then took her tank-top off, throwing it outside and freeing her beautiful breasts from their confines, but left the leggings as they were while she proceeded to run the water by touching a panel on the glass curtain. Matthew backed up against the glass of the shower trying to protect himself from the spraying drops of water deflecting from her skin, then sat and hugged his knees tight to his chest. He wanted to be prepared for the carnage.

         And it was truly a carnage. As she slowly slid the leggings down, she revealed her blood-stained nethers like some aftermath of terrible hemorrhaging. Dozens still stuck on the sweat of her skin, most of their bodies twisted and turned horribly out of place, mashed against the soft surface so forcefully that some of them were rendered to mere silhouettes painted on a canvas made of their own blood and gore. Matthew dug his nails through on his skin, trying to keep away the pain reflecting on his mind, but he couldn’t keep his eyes away.

         For so many years he had led this double life of a profiler and serial killer, training himself to kill as efficiently as possible. He hunted down and eliminated the monsters disguised as humans, people who simply didn’t care. Thanks to his gift, he could easily spot those who were oblivious to the consequences of their actions, the suffering they caused. They were the ones that could not feel, could not grasp the meaning of human emotion. They would cause pain just to see their victims wither, to hear them scream, beg, plead and cry for mercy. And for Matthew, they were those that had a huge hole within them, a big chunk of their soul missing entirely. He could never fight off the urge he felt while in their presence, only control and delay it enough so he would never be caught.

         Yet here he was, in the presence of the greatest, most frightful killer of them all, and instead he hated himself. Every part of his being urged him to do something, say something, but the cold part of his mind, the logical part still held onto his composure. It is not the time, he thought. Survival is what it’s still all about, and the moment he tried to change her is the moment he would become simply one of them, his image of a person cast aside and transformed into a mere mortal at her feet, worth nothing more than to die for her so she could enjoy her superiority. And then there was that other curious feeling in the background, like a very quiet, high-pitched humming that comforted him, warmed him. Somehow, it made him relate with her. He didn’t understand it.

         So he sat on silently, watching as the towering, divine-like being adjusted her body so the jets of water would hit her nethers.

         There were still survivors, he noted. Mostly those that had the luck, fortunate or the opposite, of being positioned right where her thighs joined her crotch, and the one his saw still wriggling on the opening of her but crack. The water washed all the blood and gore away, down her her thighs to her knees where she still kept her leggings worn, staining them with even more blood. The survivors got unstuck too, falling into the soft material. She wanted them to live on apparently. And as she moved her hand to her sex, he remembered of course that there were still those stuck inside.

         She retrieved them easily, letting them fall between her thighs on her leggings. Five, Matthew managed to count. They were all still alive. She then removed her leggings completely and, to his astonishment, wrapped them up so that none would be able to escape, and left them on the tub, blood slowly soaking the water on the surface.

         “Why?” Matthew surprised himself saying. “Why keep them alive? Why not end their misery?”

         Maia ignored him, moving around to soak her hair with water, running her fingers through them. After a short while, he decided she wasn’t going to answer him, but in the end she did, “Because it is interesting to spread them around into other, different groups and watch, listening to them tell their stories.”

         “You do that?”

         “Why?” she chuckled. “Are you surprised?”

         Matthew thought about it for a moment. “I guess not.”

         “I often even disguise myself as one of them.” She said. “Mingle with them, get to know them. It’s always satisfying to see their faces afterwards, or when one of them recognizes me. Though that’s not difficult I guess, I stand out easily after all.”

         There were a few moments of silence. “How do you even manage?”

         “Huh?” She looked at him, frowning.

         “If you get to know them, how can you kill them so easily.”

         She stopped caring for her red hair, looking down at Matthew in silence, contemplating his question before she spoke, “Because it is very rewarding. It’s not just you who get to know them, but they get to know you too. They become more relaxed around you, feel safe around you, develop feelings for you. And when you do betray them, “ a slow, sinister smile formed on her lips, “ it is that much sweeter.”

         A cold shiver ran down Matthew’s spine. “So that is the fate that awaits me, isn't it?”

         “Maybe.” She said, continuing to wash her hair. “Maybe not.”

         Something caught her attention at her feet, and she shifted her gaze. Matthew followed it, finding a tiny woman beating against her right foot amidst the torrent of water crashing down around her. Maia touched the glass panel again, stopping the gush of water and the sound that it made.

         Immediately, both heard the woman’s screams. Tears streamed down her face as she placed fist and kick after fist and kick on Maia’s skin with vengeful fury, swearing a different word each time. She must have escaped from the confines of the leggings somehow, but instead trying to run away, she chose let her anger and it’s overwhelming need for revenge overcome her.

         It was futile, of course. She was a mere insect compared to Maia. Matthew looked up again, waiting for her to react, but instead he saw a dark, disturbing expression on her face that he couldn’t quite fathom for a moment. She was looking down at the woman and… as he looked down again, he understood.

         It was the helplessness, the sheer inability to do harm to Maia. She had taken everything from the woman, her life, her dreams, her pride, and her dignity. She had assaulted and raped her, made her to witness gruesome death and horror, forced her to be her sexual plaything, turned her into something to be merely thrown or washed away after use. And now, given the chance, the woman couldn’t even scratch her tormentor’s skin. The pain and frustration turned Maia on.

         If Matthew knew Maia well enough, he predicted her to end the woman’s life very soon. And the way she would do that is by feeding upon the helplessness of the woman and having her suffering multiplied many times over. Quite how, he was unsure. Maybe stuffing her back into her sex? She was one of those that survived the ordeal there inside, so it didn’t feel quite right to Matthew.

         His thoughts were cut off as Maia crouched down however, and he was about to test his prediction. The woman’s strength gave out and she collapsed on her knees, looking up towards the looming body just in time to see a massive finger ramming her down on the slippery surface of the tub. The finger then turned her over and shoved her forcefully along the surface, burying her face below the shallow water, causing her to struggle and flail in panic with renewed strength.

         That was the first act for Matthew, assertion of dominance. There’s nothing you can do against me.

         After enough panic seeped into her victim and before she could drown, Maia pinched the woman on her foot and lifted her up until she had her level with her face, commencing the next act, number two, the predatory stare. Making it clear who the hunter and who the hunted was.

         But what followed shocked Matthew on a deep level. He expected the final act to follow, devourment, but he didn’t expect it to abide quite so literal to its name as Maia first gave her a thorough lick before she sucked the woman from her fingers into her mouth.

         Cannibalism?

         No, it didn’t fit. She is not a cannibal. But what was she doing? He didn’t understand. She got up again pressing the panel to continue her shower. He watched as she apparently slouched her tiny victim around in her mouth. Was she really going to eat her? He didn’t believe it, but then he remembered something… she didn’t see herself as a mere human, she was more than that. She saw herself being ascended, separate from simple mortals. For her, it wasn’t cannibalism, she was much further up the food chain. And just as he realized that she would do it, she did it then and there while Matthew watched, a small lump becoming briefly visible on her throat as it passed through towards her stomach.

         He understood then, it was logical. There were few things more frightening and humiliating than being eaten alive, to be confined into a dark, humid coffin that would slowly burn you alive before your body would be dragged down the depths of your captor’s intestines where most of it would be broken down to serve the master body however it pleased while the rest of it would be left to be converted into feces and be simply shat out when the time came.

         The ultimate enslavement.

         Matthew shivered again, hugging his knees tighter, reminding himself how god damn lucky he was while Maia continued her shower.

         “You know, “ he said after a while, “any ordinary man would have gone mad by now if he were in my stead.”

         She looked down at him. “But you are no ordinary man.” And as he craned his head to meet her eyes, she added, “And I’m no ordinary woman.” And smiled a warm smile at him before she closed her eyes and met the cascading water of the shower on her face.

         He sighed. Hope. why was she so damn good at playing with around with his?

         As he stood there, thinking, he failed to spot her sudden shifting form and from one moment to the next, he found himself being lifted through the air, everything becoming a gigantic field of blurry shapes all around him before they coalesced into her gigantic face as the motions stopped, the twin emeralds peering through him with blazing intensity while his heart raced with furious pace.

         Then he found himself lurched forward and smashed against the soft skin of her right breast before being dragged around the surface of its wet skin. He fought, tried to crawl his way out of her grip without the slightest success. But then he took control of his instincts and let his muscles become slack. He didn’t need to fight, she wouldn’t hurt him, he made himself believe that forcefully.

         She really didn’t. Pushing, shoving and dragging his body around like that would have been very painful on dry skin, but it was surprisingly pleasant on the wetness. He accepted the fact that she made him an unwilling explorer of the vastness of her body as he was voyaged around. He found himself passing through her cleavage, feel every dent of her collarbones, ride around the curves of her arms before turning towards its pits and then around her back, through her other arm towards the hills of her buttocks, round her thighs and back on the plain of her abdomen. Strangely, he found himself sporting an erection, and he flushed. She noticed too when he was dragged around the sensitive areolas, evident by her giggle.

         She upturned her palm again, looking down at him with a bright smile as she moved a finger to brush a single stroke against his erection while he tried to protect himself futilely. Her smile slowly softened as she looked at him, and then hugged him against her cleavage again, turned him upside down, and shoved him downwards.

         Matthew panicked when he realized where he was headed. Suddenly, he was clawing with all fours against her skin, his heart racing even faster, his erection faltering immediately.

         “Please Maia! Don’t do this to me!” He screamed with all his miniscule might.

         She stopped, right in front of her crotch. He was rolled backwards on her palm, momentarily losing orientation before he regained his bearings, and looked up at her.

         He froze.

         Through the haze of falling water drops, he saw the face of regret, painful regret that emanated chokingly powerful down on him. And he immediately grew so too. He had disappointed her, unwilling as it was. He had made her feel bad even though it was her doing, and he could not help but hate himself even more. Why would he feel so awful for someone like her? Why would he feel so bad for having prevented his own rape? Had he become so out of touch with reality that he would have gladly let himself go through the ordeal just so he wouldn’t have disappointed her?

         “I’m sorry.” He said, barely believing he let those words out.

         She said nothing. Instead, her face turned into something he could read like a writing on the wall.

         I’m so very sorry too.

         But he did indeed become disappointed at that moment. Disappointed that she didn’t say it out loud.

         She lowered him down, and continued with her shower, back turned against him. After she finished with the shower, she stepped out, dried her hair but didn’t dress in anything. She simply took Matthew, dried him too before she gave him back his ragged clothes, then took him outside the bathroom, walking along the narrow corridor until she stood in front of what looked like an elevator.

         “Time to show you that something.”

    As the elevator ascended, Matthew expected his thoughts to be filled with all the wild ideas he had imagined this place to be in the past few weeks. A military bunker deep beneath hundreds of yards of earth, or some government research facility hidden in the middle of the desert, or even a secret corporate project in the middle of an unsuspecting skyscraper. But his mind was devoid of them all. Instead, he only concentrated on his beating heart while he clung to Maia’s thumb, prepared for just about anything.

    Still, he could have never prepared himself for it.

    It was confusing at first as they ascended to some sort of rooftop, the darkness in the distance, dotted with small, white points moving sideways in unison. He turned his head to his right, following the metallic surface of the rooftop stretching along as it gradually arched up. He craned his head, expecting it to end somewhere, but it didn’t. Instead it simply curved all the way to the other side and joined the surface to his left, like a gigantic ring.

    “Impossible.” He said as his mind hurried to make sense of the scene. The dots were stars of course, suspended on the dark vastness of space, and Matthew found himself on a rotating space station.

    Maia said nothing, just watched his awe-filled expression with a slight smile on her lips. Her hand moved to a console nearby, fingers tapping on it before a hissing sound and the upward movement announced the platform they stood on ascending again, high into the void above.

    “This is just impossible!” He said again, shaking his head. “A secret space station the world didn’t know about, ok. I could have somehow believed that. But this thing is… it’s easily a mile from end to end! Impossible!”

    Maia let out a soft laugh. “Your world didn’t build it though.”

    Matthew turned at her, frowning. “My world?”

    “Yes. Your world.” Maia shifted her gaze towards the stars in the distance, the platform still rising steadily upwards. “It’s just one amongst thousands of human worlds in this little corner of the universe.”

    Matthew looked at her for a few moments, then burst out in a genuine laugh, but stopped when he saw her expression hadn’t changed. “You are serious, aren’t you?”

    “Look around you Matthew. Why do you think have I brought you here?”

    He did just that, swinging his head around to take in the station in more detail. The size of it was still overwhelming, though it wasn’t very broad, maybe two hundred and fifty yards. But if it was a mile in diameter as he judged, then it was more than three miles in circumference. And a third of its section was completely transparent, revealing the lush forest beneath.

    As turned his head around more, he spotted a giant purple-ish orb behind Maia’s frame. It took a few seconds before his mind made sense of it to be a giant gas planet, the one they were probably orbiting. He followed the opposite of the arc that illuminated two thirds of its surface until he spotted a bright source of light. The sun was much smaller than the usual sun he saw every morning back home.

    “I don’t understand. How is this even possible?”

    “It’s normal.” She said. “It takes a little bit of time to completely suspend your disbelief.”

    “But… thousands of human worlds?” He looked at her, his expression pleading for understanding.

    “Yes. All seeded thousands of years ago.”

    It was too much for Matthew to take in for a moment. He closed his eyes, unable to believe all he ever knew about the word and the universe to be a cover up of epic proportions. But as he did, he noticed something strange happening to his body, but couldn’t quite place what.

    “What’s going on?” He asked her.

    She smiled. “Where do you think we’re going?”

    He looked around again, and it all clicked in one moment. The station was rotating, thus generating artificial gravity. If they were ascending towards the hollow space in the middle, that meant…

    A sudden rush of nostalgic childhood memories and emotions flooded Matthew. He was in space. He was getting lighter with every second and he would be able to feel weightlessness! He couldn't help but grin like a small child.

    “Unbelievable…” he said, still struggling to comprehend his situation. “And I’m sorry to be repeating myself, “ he said, turning towards Maia again, “but how is all this even possible? How can there be thousands of other worlds without us knowing about it?”

    Her expression darkened a bit. “It is because of… “ she trailed a bit, trying to find the right word perhaps. “Because of a cycle.”

    Matthew frowned. “A cycle?”

    “It doesn’t matter right now.” She said, and then her fingers curled around him.

    “Wait! I-” But he was too late and he found himself being hurled upwards. She released her grip on him and he flew up on a slight angle. The sensation of falling then spread around his body and he flailed his limbs instinctively, but he didn’t fall. He just floated away from Maia who after some time caught up with him. They were in center.

    He watched as Maia lifted her huge body from the platform and let herself float gently while the platform retreated a little distance back, but leaving a little hook-like handle behind which Maia grabbed to maneuver around. And Matthew found out that the falling sensation wasn’t something he appreciated and dampened his enthusiasm a bit.

    “It takes a little while to get use to.” Maia said as she approached him slowly.

    “Well, I admit I was one of those kids who, if all dreams came true, would have collectively rendered space full of unemployed Astronauts, but I didn’t expect it to be this scary and uncomfortable.”

    “Just relax. Let it happen.”

    He did. He breathed in deeply and let his muscles grow slack. Indeed, the falling sensation wore off a bit as he concentrated on the stars in the distance and his mind made the station rotate around him rather than him against it.

    Then, he finally freed his mind to his surroundings and truly appreciated the situation he found himself in. He really was in space, the giant planet on the distance unrecognizable to any he knew in his solar system. He thought he must be light years away from his home.

    “How come we can breathe?” He wondered out loud. “Shouldn’t we suffocate and freeze to death?”

    “There’s a force field around the station.” She said, her huge body looming behind him. ”It keeps a rather large amount of warm air inside the bubble and keeps those pesky micro asteroids away.”

    “Ah.” Force fields. He fancied anything was possible now. “And what do you usually do up here?”

    “Oh, fun like this.” A finger suddenly swooped Matthews legs from under him and he found himself rolling around in empty space, unable to fight against the rotating motion.

    “Ma..ia..ple...ase...this...is..arhg!” Her crashed on a finger, latching his hands on it instinctively.

    She laughed. “Ah, the size difference, or rather the mass difference, is so much more pronounced in zero-g than on the ground. So easy to play around with you.”

    Matthew gasped for air, the surroundings swirling about in his vision. He had to close his eyes to force himself not to throw up. He didn’t want to know how throwing up in space felt like. But just as he regained his bearings, her finger flicked and unlatched him. He only had a few brief moments to gaze at his destination before he smacked against her right breast, and bounced back from it. She was like a planet and he was like her moon, unable to do anything about it.

    She reached out with her hand at him and held out her index finger where he could relatch himself, absorbing his momentum before she retreated her hand and he was floating steadily. Until that moment he had thought of her being to his side, but with his feet facing her now, his mind saw her as if being below him, like a giant sea monster beneath the crystal clear surface of a vast ocean, the threads of her floating red hair like tentacles spread all around. It reminded him of that first time in the tub. Damn, she was beautiful.

    “Why have you brought me here, Maia?”

    She looked at him through the shifting strands of hair with her green eyes for a few moments before she moved her head to gaze at the gas planet. “You want to know my story, don’t you?”

    His heart paced a little faster. “I do.”

    “Then you have a understand a few things first.”

    “That certainly seems to be true.” He took a brief glance at the rotating station around them. “What did you mean by seeded?”

    She breathed in a little deeper before she spoke. “It means humans did not originate on the planet you come from, or any one of the other thousands of planets they inhabit. Humanity has a planet of origin, but it’s long… dead.”

    “Dead?”

    “Yes. Dead, abandoned, uninhabitable.” She said, looking back at him and crossed her arms and legs, like lying on a bed. “The story of humanity’s origin is long, and one for another time. Right now, all you need to know is this: the planets humans inhabit are not all at the same stage of advancement. Some like yours are in the middle of the information age, others are still learning how to shape bronze. Some planets have globe-spanning empires ruled by the might of gunpowder, others are fractured into a thousand small states.

    “A select few planets are so advanced that their cities consist of miles-tall skyscrapers, and only they know about each other. Others have to ascend to earn the privilege of joining them.”

    She paused, letting Matthew take all the new information in and process it. It was as if she was pitching a sci-fi script for a movie or an idea for a book. It was ridiculous, but he knew that it was true, she saw it in her face, there was no twisting on her words, no deceit. She didn’t need to.

    She reached at Matthew with her hand, pinched him gently on his leg and made a small pull, slow enough to cause him to fall and land on her abdomen, like landing on an asteroid. He looked around, appreciating every detail of her body, her curves, the way her breasts floated and formed this perfect, seductive shape no bra could achieve, and behind him, the way the pillars of her thighs stretched high above, not needing to worry about gravity. Why did this harbinger of death have to be so beautiful?

    “And those advanced planets, “ He said, distracting himself from his thoughts, “they decide when one of the others can join them?”

    She let out a small chuckle, the tensing of her muscles slowly launching him upward again. “Not quite, but that’s for another time too. The reason I’m telling you all this is because when I do tell you my story, I don’t want to deal with your inevitable questions that would follow unless you understood all this. And what better way to convince you than… “ she spread her arms.

    He understood. “Fine then. All good stories begin with a small hook.” He spread his arms too, looking at the rotating station. “Tell me, what is this place?”

    She smiled, a gentle, beautiful smile, but one that betrayed a hint of sadness. “This place has a simple purpose, Matthew. It’s my prison.”

    And he was hooked immediately.

    “For my story, “ she said, holding Matthew on her palm, “I ask for something in return first.”

    They were back within the station. She had said nothing after suggesting this place to be her prison, ignoring his many questions that followed, and simply took him back inside. When she reopened her palm, he found her leaning against few pillows on a bed within a room full of drapes, sheet, covers and all that. Much warmer than the dull, metallic atmosphere of the other usual rooms.

    “I somehow sense I don’t really have a choice, “ he said with a hint of irony, “but very well. What would your request be?”

    She smirked. “Make me feel good, Matt.” Then her palm turned and he fell, once again smacking against her right breast, but on an angle that caused him to bounce against her left before he tumbled down through her cleavage, futilely fighting for some support as he slid along her abdomen until he reached the slope of her crotch and fell on the sheets between her thighs.

    She gave him the time to regain his bearings, and when he did, he found only lust on her face. He shifted his gaze down at her sex and its monstrous size. It was finally his turn.

    But it was different with him, of course. There was no forcing, no violence, he would do it willingly, and he desperately wanted to for a long time now. So he approached it with a purposeful stride.

    He stopped right in front of her mechanism of love. How many people had it claimed so far? He vividly remembered those that crawled on its folds, fighting for the honey that she had layered on her clitoris. He now understood what she meant when she had said they had come from a place he didn’t know existed.

    Maia gave him the time he needed to gather his thoughts. She knew his thoughts, and knew that he knew too. And when he was ready, he banished them all from his mind, concentrating on his own worship.

    His focus fell on her clitoris, marveling at its beauty. It was the only organ on the human body that had the sole purpose of sexual excitement. He understood its importance; it was the key to her desire and passion. So he reached forward with his head, and bit on it.

    It was as if he suddenly possessed the power to cause earthquakes.

    The world around him trembled, her thighs arched, the sheets shifted from under his feet. And he smiled, biting down again. Moans filled the air as it became scented with her sexual desire, overpowering his sense of smell. Her nectar filled soaked the white beneath his feet.

    He took a step back, gazing at her expression for a moment as she bit her lower lip, her breath gathering pace. She tried with all her might to restrain her from her usual self, he saw that on her plain as day. She was not used to holding back, caring about the object of her sexual desire. She wanted, and she took. But he was different, and he was proud of that.

    Stripping out his clothes in hurry, he threw himself against her pussy, lavishing it with kisses, running his tongue on every inch of its lips, worshiping it with all his miniscule strength. It grew glisteningly wet in response, swelling like a blooming spring flower, welcoming its devotee with metaphorical open arms.

    He did not understand what it was about this woman that made him shed every guarding mechanism and every wall he had ever build to protect himself during his life, and simply lose himself in her. He had never felt about a woman the way he did right now, willing to do anything to please her even though he knew she would be his ultimate end. He didn’t care, and he loved not caring.

    But as he bled every ounce of his passion into her sex, the shadow of her hand that engulfed him and the plain restraint he saw in its movements told him all he needed to know - it was not enough. It demanded to be filled. It demanded sacrifice.

    He did not know if he would survive it unscathed, but he moved on, reaching inside, gathering all his strength. He would do it for her even though every bit of logic in his mind screamed madness.

    Then a flick of her finger sent him sprawling back onto the sheets, denying him his offering of sacrifice. He looked up at her, fearing he had disappointed her, but the shake of her head told him otherwise.

    “No.” She said. “Not you. Not like this” The palm of her hand came down on top of him, burying him on the bed, and then that awful, unbearable pain blossomed on every inch of his body.

    Again, he didn’t care. He let the pain happen, and it was so much easier when he knew that at the end of the storm, there was a golden sky. Her soft lips tasted like heaven when they woke him from the pain.

    He opened his eyes as she drew back, seeing her mesmerizing pair switching back and forth between his. Her hair cascaded around his head like a curtain, bathing the light on her face in its shade. She was so irresistibly beautiful.

    He reached up an arm around her, sliding his hand on her back in a gentle swipe, feeling its softness. Then he dragged her body against his, feeling her breasts strike his chest, her thigh sliding between his, nuzzling against his hardness. He wanted to taste her lips again.

    As they shared a passionate kiss, she let him guide her and they rolled around until he was on top of her. His lips unlocked from hers and shifted, moving across her chin and down her neck, kissing inch after inch of its delicate softness. His hands caressed her body, sliding along every curve and every dip of its perfection, moving to the round breasts, kneading them, marveling on their unique softness tipped by the hardness of her nipples.

    His mouth followed, bathing them with his tongue while her hands gripped his hair, guiding him. His hands then lingered while he moved down, still tasting inch after inch of her skin until he was once again right in front of her sex. It looked so harmless.

    This time, he was much more capable of true worship. His tongue dived in, enjoying every layer of its folds. He washed in every trickle of her nectar with it, tasted the inside of its pink flesh, his lips assisting each endeavor with their softness, forceful tugs on his hair indicating each time he sent shivers throughout her body. And her clitoris was the key to it all.

    Then a push from her hands told him it was time, and he rose, eyes locking.

    Was this how true sex felt like?

    He paused, breathing heavily, as did she. And again, she gave him that moment, she understood him so well. He had never experienced the rush of emotions he was feeling at that moment. Sex in the past had always been… ugly, violent.

    He never understood it. Heart raced, temperature raised, arteries constricted, pupils dilated, blood pressure skyrocketed. Electrical pulses fired randomly, sweat layered every inch of skin, secretions burst out of every gland, muscles spasmed as if lifting a car.

    But now, he had finally unlocked the secret to human purpose. Why did it need to be with a being that had caused so much pain, hopelessness, despair, and death? Why her?

    Her hand reached forward, grabbing him by his neck as she leaned close to him. “Forget your thoughts. Just let it happen.”

    He did, nuzzling his hardness against her depths, and bliss followed.

    He didn’t know how long it lasted, a minute, an hour… he became oblivious to time as he thrust again and again while he kissed her, lavished her, lost himself in her. Then his orgasm came and exploded in a fiery burst of passion that threatened to suffocate him. The intensity of the experience made him feel as if he had lived for centuries and just discovered lovemaking.

    As he slid out and fell beside her, he felt something in the background of the afterglow. His gift, it screamed. He had trusted it all his life, and only now did he know what true bliss felt like. He ignored it as her hand slid along his chest.

    ---

    He had embraced her for some time, held her in his arms, her red hair sprawled on his chest. They had said nothing to each other, just lingering in silence, both left to their thoughts.

    She reached out with an arm after a while, touched a console by the bed, its symbols unrecognizable to Matthew. The effect of her action was a burst of flames on a fireplace opposite of the bed that he hadn’t noticed before, and the sound of rain seeming to originate beyond the walls, flashes of light occasionally jutting from behind the curtains, followed by a roll of distant thunder.

    “I like the rain.” She said. “I miss it. I haven’t felt real rain on my skin for so many years now.”

    Matthew said nothing, only stroked her hair. He knew she was about to tell something she had probably never shared with anyone else, and he needed to be quiet, listen to her. She wanted that, someone to understand. The unfocused green eyes told him she was gathering her thoughts, he would probably be in for quite a ride.

    She breathed in a deep breath, and then spoke, “I was born on a planet hundreds of light years away from yours, and almost a century behind in its development. Most of our factories still ran on coal, cars on primitive gas engines, and computers were still human beings.

    “But our world was a little different. Instead of having many world powers spread around the globe, balancing each other like most worlds do at that point, ours had only two. Both were super powers. Both totalitarian. And they shared a massive border since our world had only one giant continent.

    “Naturally, they hated each other. Not just because of differing ideologies, or that each nation wanted to dominate the sole continent in its entirety. No, there was another simple reason, rooted on a biological quirk of evolution that happened when humans in our world still used sticks and stones.

    “Our world had two cradles of civilization out of which the two superpowers formed. One was dominated by people with black jet black hair and brown eyes, but the other by those with flaming red hair and green eyes, rooted on a thousands of years old genetic mutation.

    “A simple difference in pigment, yet it bred so much hatred. But both nations also feared each other, and that fear meant long lasting peace. We hadn’t seen war for a century since the time both of them formed at roughly the same time.”

    She paused for a moment, remembering, eyes blinking several times. “It was nine years ago. Nine years since the inevitable happened, and my kind was paid the price. I was only sixteen, living on the capital of the darkhairs where my father served as ambassador.

    “It feels like another lifetime has passed since then.”

    Maia traced her finger through the map. She liked studying history, for the most part. It felt fresh after all the hard work she did in the scientific subjects. The pre-unification eras with all the warring states on both sides of the continent presented opportunities for many interesting stories to arise. The modern world was dull on the other hand. Peaceful, efficient, but unelegant.

    The door of the embassy’s study room opened, and Kaia entered. “Hey, sis, Syl’s here. She wants to see you.”

    Maia leaned back from the desk. “This late at night? Where is she?”

    “She’s waiting outside.”

    Maia left her books as they were and got up, following Kaia as they made their way downstairs to the front entrance of the embassy. “Did she say what she’s here for?” Maia asked her older sister.

    “I think she said she wants to show you something.” Kaia said, shrugging, then left for her room.

    Sylisia was waiting on the front porch within the embassy gates, gazing at the sky when Maia stepped outside in the chilly spring night. “Hello, Syl. What are you doing here at this hour?”

    The dark-haired girl turned. “Maia!” She said with her usual cheerful tone. “Grab a coat, and come with me.”

    “Now?” Maia frowned. “Where?”

    “I want you to see something. Come now.”

    “Syl, it’s late. Why don’t you come in instead? You can tell me about it.”

    Syl sighed, straightening her posture. “Laeiamaia, as the daughter of the Sovereign, I hereby command you to accompany me, right now!”

    Maia looked at her for a moment, then burst out laughing, as did Syl a moment later. “Fine! I guess I have no choice.” Maia said afterwards.

     The girls walked down the empty, cobbled streets of the capital, flanked by the typical five-story buildings that made up the district. They headed towards the grand palace where the Sovereign resided, the supreme leader of the nation and Sylisia’s father.

    “What is it that you want to show me, Syl?” Maia asked her.

    “Oh, I won’t spoil the fun.” She said. “You’ll see for yourself when we get there.”

    Maia liked Syl. She was different from other dark-hairs, it was not easy to live in a country where most gazed at red-hairs with eyes full disgust. She looked at Maia differently, eyes always glancing at her body whenever she thought Maia wasn’t looking. Though Maia felt a little sorry for her inclination, she still welcomed the attention. Syl was her only true friend besides Kaia.

    “I hope it’s worth dragging me out of the warmth of my study.” Maia said, taking a glance back at the car that trailed them - Sylisia’s guards of course, she was a very important person.

    “Have I ever disappointed you, Maia?”

    Maia smiled in response, and Syl put a hand around hers, holding her tight as they walked down the empty street.

    “I kind of like it, anyway.” Maia said.

    “Huh? What do you mean?”

    “The empty streets, the silence. I don’t need to tuck my hair within my hat and wear sunglasses. I don’t have ignore the silent contempt and hollow insults. Having the daughter of the most powerful man in the country to walk with after curfew has its benefits.”

    Syl giggled. “But does it anger you? The hate? I’ve never seen you angry.”

    “You don’t want to.” Maia said, her expression darkening a little. “I don’t easily get angry, but I lose control when I do.”

    “Oh, now I have to think of something to get you angry.” Syl said, eyes shifting to the ground, thoughtful. Maia thought she saw worry in them for a moment.

    Arriving at the outskirts of the grand palace, they made their way in through the usual smaller entrance they always used when Maia visited Syl. They did not want to be bothered by all the greetings and commotion that came with it.

    They headed to the palace’s grand garden, Syl guiding Maia towards a bench where they sat in the darkness, having a good view towards the main entrance of the palace building itself and the plaza in front of it. It was filled with many cars that indicated an important visitor to Maia.

    “Are you trying to show me someone?” She asked Syl. “A famous singer or someone like that?”

    Syl giggled, a mischievous hint in it. “Oh no, she’s not really famous. Important, yes, but she does not like to be seen in public.”

    “She?” Maia frowned. “What woman could be so important as to be a guest to your father.”

    “She comes from a wealthy family, that’s all I know.”

    “If that’s all you know, then what makes her so special?” Maia turned towards the palace as voices raised in volume. “And why would she dislike being seen in public?”

    “Oh, “ Syl giggled even more, “you’ll just have to see!”

    At that moment, a large group of people emerged from the building, mostly guards and men dressed in official business suits. One of them, dressed in a military uniform, was clearly Syl’s father, but the figure that caught Maia’s eye was the woman that Syl was talking about, and her distinct appearance.

    “Tell me Maia, “ Syl said, “have you ever seen hair like that?”

    Maia shook her head, mouth gaping, as she watched the woman with golden hair running down her shoulders. She was still talking with Syl’s father in a polite conversation while they stood beside her car.

    “Who is she?” Maia asked.

    Syl shrugged. “As I’ve said, I don’t know who she is. But I thought you might want to see her.”

    Maia was glad she did. She was majestic, resembling a creature emerged out of the fairytales of desert folk or northerners. “I have seen albinos, but this is different.” She turned to Syl. “Are you sure it’s natural? It isn’t dyed with something unusual?”

    Syl shook her head. “Her hair is real, trust me. I actually managed to find quite a few threads on a desk on the office after she had been there the other day. It’s… hair! No different than yours.”

    “What do you mean mine?”

    “You know!” Syl blushed. “I wish I had hair like yours.”

    Maia looked at her, half-shocked. “Syl, when I walk around the city, people look at me as if I was a rat. I wish I could change it to be dark like yours instead!”

    “It doesn’t matter for me. I think it’s beautiful.”

    Maia smiled, glancing back at the golden-haired woman who seemed to have finished her conversation with Syl’s father and was about enter the car. For a moment, she stopped, turning her head towards Maia and Syl.

    Maia froze, and she could feel Syl doing the same, but after second or two, the golden-haired woman turned her head back and entered the car, leaving.

    “That was weird.” She said.

    “Yeah.” Syl said. “Anyway, imagine if there was a whole bunch of people with hair like that. A whole tribe, or even a nation, that would be funny.”

    “Indeed. Would put quite an interesting twist to this stupid hatred.”

    “Yeah. And you should see her eyes, Maia!”

    “What about them?”

    “She doesn’t have brown eyes like us, or green ones like you.” Syl said. “Oh no, she has blue ones! A deep, ocean blue shade!”

    Maia looked at Syl with that half-shocked expression again. “What? Blue?”

    Syl nodded. “They’re the most incredible eyes I’ve ever seen.”

    “Now I have to seem them, Syl! Promise me you’ll take me close enough to see her in person some day!” She grabbed Syl by her shoulders, intentionally placing her head inches from Syl’s. “Promise me!”

    Syl smiled at her, though she hesitated, something bothering her. “I promise.”

    Maia hugged her. “I should get back.”

    “Let me walk you back.”

    Making their way back to the embassy, Maia tried to ignore Syl’s uneasiness at first. It was unlike her to feel nervous, and she felt best not to mention it. But as the steps grew and the silent awkwardness stretched, Maia couldn’t ignore it longer, and halted.

    “Is there something you want to tell me, Syl?”

    Syl stopped too, but didn’t turn and just remained still and silent.

    “Syl, talk to me.” Maia moved and grabbed her shoulder. The drops of tears streaming from Syl’s face shocked her. “What’s wrong, Syl? Please talk to me!”

    Syl lurched forward in a sudden move and hugged Maia tightly. “I’m sorry Maia, I really am. I pleaded my father, I begged him, but he wouldn’t listen. You have to forgive me!”

    A deep, disturbing uneasiness grew within Maia at that moment. “Your father? What is going on Syl?” She pushed Syl away. “You are scaring me!”

    “Listen, “ Syl said, wiping her tears away and stepping back. “I will do everything to get you out, I promise!” Then she ran off into the darkness towards the car that trailed them, and drove back towards the palace, leaving Maia alone, stunned in silence.

    It took only a few brief moments of contemplation before Maia jerked out of her shock and ran towards the embassy, growing more and more fearful with every step.

    As she turned the corner, her worst fears were confirmed when she saw dozens of cars, countless police and military uniforms surrounding the building. “No, no, no… this can’t be happening!”

    When she stepped into the light of the commotion, they noticed her, and rushed towards her. She stopped on her tracks, legs growing weak when they suddenly pointed their guns and rifles towards her. She held her arms up in instinct. “What is going on?”

    They didn’t respond. They surrounded her, cuffed her, and then shoved her within a car which then drove through the streets, refusing to meet any of her screaming questions, only gagging her instead.

    ---

    “What for?” Matthew asked her.

    Maia laid back against the pillows, starting at the ceiling, but her eyes were light years away both in distance and time. “War, of course. My father was the ambassador, he was branded a spy for obvious reasons, and by extension, so were I and Kaia. They arrested us and the whole staff the night of the invasion.”

    “How come?” He said. “Were there no signs?”

    “Not anything unusual.” She said. “It was swift, sudden. I did not know it at the time, but the shock of their advance was so sudden that our frontlines collapsed within days, tracking back hundreds of miles before being able to reorganize. And when an almost coherent line had reformed, they invaded the most important parts of the country through the sea. It was a plan rehearsed for years, and we had absolutely no idea about it. We were utterly unprepared.”

    “I understand.” He thought for a second. “I guessed there must have been a war and you lost, but why tell me about this Syl person, and that blonde woman? How does it all end up with you being the person that you are now?”

    A faint smile formed on her lips. “I haven’t even begun properly.” She said. “It’ll take time to understand, and time is what I have in abundance. Besides, “ She turned on her side, eying Matthew, “ aren’t you my therapist now? Don’t I have to share every little detail with you?” Her smile broadened, growing mischievous.

    “Uh. Sure.” Her openness in the last few hours made him a little uncomfortable, but his excitement overshadowed it. “I mean yes. I want to know everything there is to know about you, and this universe of ours.”

    “Then tell me what you think about it.” She said. “What do you make of this little innocent ambassador's girl turned into a violent monster that kills people for pleasure?”

    “I won’t tell you that until you tell me the whole story.”

    She looked at him for a few moments, her green eyes unrelenting as always. “Fair enough.” She finally said, and leaned closer to Matthew, putting an arm across his chest and planting a kiss on his shoulder before she closed her eyes again. “We did not have blondes on our planet, so I had never seen one before. I thought she was very odd, did not fit, that something surrounding her was inherently wrong. I had a lot of time to think about what had happened while I was thrown behind bars, imprisoned for weeks without any explanation. I had to wait a long time for it.

    “And as for Syl.” She took a deep breath. “She actually held her promise. I hadn’t seen light for days, was separated from Kaia and my father without any information on their wellbeing, and was fed scraps while I lingered in the damp darkness, thinking I had long spent all my tears. It was very difficult for a sixteen-year-old girl to experience all that. And when Syl came, I couldn’t hold it any longer and broke again.

    “That hindered me from seeing the changed person that I embraced at that moment.”

   “What’s happening, Syl?” Maia pleaded to her. “Where’s my father and Kaia?”

    “You need a bath.” Syl said, the coldness in her tone forcing a shiver through Maia. “Your stench is unbearable.”

    “Syl, please…”

    “War happened, Maia.” She said. “We invaded your nation. You are a political prisoner. At least for just a little longer.”

    Despite having guessed it, Maia still froze on her spot. Two nations with hundreds of millions of people on each side. It would be bloody. She could only imagine the horrors yet to come. Anger flared within her as realisation dawned, and she clenched her fists in response. “You knew, didn’t you.” She muttered enough for Sylisia to hear.

    “Of course I did.” Sylisia responded with her cold tone.

    “Then why didn’t you warn me? I thought we we-”

    “Stop it, Maia!” Syl snapped. “You know damn well I could have never done that. I would never betray my father.”

    “Then why?” Maia looked at her, her anger growing. “Why take me out like that as if nothing was going on?”

    Sylisia remained silent for a few seconds. When she spoke, her tone had grown soft. “I just wanted to see you one last time, in case I would have never seen you again. But it doesn’t matter now, Maia. You need to come with me.”

    “Why should I trust you?” Maia was about to lose control.

    “For your sister’s sake.”

    Maia’s eyes widened, and all the anger faded away in an instant, replaced by fear. “Please tell me if she’s well! And my father?”

    “Just follow me and remain silent.” Syl turned, gesturing for Maia to follow her.

    She followed Sylisia, she had to. There was no other option but to rot on her cell, she needed to see her family again.

    “Syl, please, tell me if my father and sister are well!” She said, but Sylisia ignored her.

    Guards were posted everywhere on the corridors of the prison. They glanced at the girls as they made their way, eyes full of disdain when their gaze fell upon Maia. She was used to it, but instead of making her a little uncomfortable, the intensity truly scared Maia now. She felt like being trapped in a serpent’s den.

    “Syl! I beg you!” Maia reached for Sylisia’s hand. One of the guards raised the blunt end of his rifle and was about to strike Maia.

    “NO!” The Sovereign’s daughter shouted. “Don’t touch her without my permission!” The guard hesitated for a moment, then backed away. “And as for your father, we are on our way to see him.”

    The relief Maia felt in a sudden was heaven-sent. They passed the dark halls of the cell blocks and were moving towards an brightly lit one. “Thank you!” She said, tears welling up again. “Thank you for keeping your promise, Syl!”

    “Don’t thank me yet.”

    “What?” Maia wiped her tears away. “What do you mean?”

    “Take a look for yourself.”

    They reached a viewing corridor of sorts, beyond glass panels of which Maia could see an open area encircled by the building they were in. There people lined up on the trimmed grass, dressed in officer clothes, while five others on simpler, soldier uniforms stood on a line with hoisted rifles. Opposite of them was a man with distinct red hair, tied up against a wooden post and blindfolded.

    “Father…” Maia looked at Syl as the situation became clear. “Syl, they can’t… no!”

    “I’m sorry, Maia.” She said with regretful eyes. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

    Maia placed her hands on the glass. “You can’t do this!” She screamed, but they could not hear her. He could not hear her. He wasn’t even aware Maia was watching. One of the men said something, and the soldiers dropped their rifles, pointing them towards Maia’s father.

    Maia beat against the glass with her fists, screaming as loud as she could, but she was helpless, unable to do anything but watch as an officer lowered his hand, and the soldiers pulled their triggers. Maia’s father was killed instantly.

    “Why?” Maia cried as she dropped on her knees, hands shaking as she buried her face in them. “Why did you bring me here!”

    Syl crouched down, placing a hand on Maia’s shoulders. “I’m really sorry. There was nothing I could have possibly done about it, you know that.” She moved her hand under Maia’s chin and motioned for Maia to turn her head and open her tearful eyes. “Listen to me my dear friend-”

    “You are not my friend!” Maia pushed her away. “How can you say that?”

    “Maia…” Sylisia stood up again. “This war… you haven’t got the slightest idea of the horrors that are happening. Those people there have declared your kind as subhuman, worth less than rabid dogs. And you, without your father alive, have no purpose to them anymore. You were scheduled to be executed too. It took a lot of convincing to get my father to spare you and your sister. There was only one way to do it.”

    Maia looked at Syl, trying to pull herself together. “What way?”

    “As I’ve said before, for your sister’s sake.” Syl held a down a hand at Maia. “Come.” She said, motioning for Maia to get away from the balcony and never look back. She did.

    “Let us first get to my room on the palace.” Syl said. “Follow me, keep your head down and keep quiet, don’t speak unless spoken to and wait until we get there. Then we can talk again.”

    Maia accepted. She did it automatically. The truth in Syl’s words was undeniable even though it all felt too surreal. In the space of a few weeks, she went from having a quiet, boring life of an ambassador’s daughter to an orphaned girl, stranded in the middle of a hostile environment, having possibly no home to return to. It was like riding a bicycle in the darkness, unable to see the path in front of her. She did not know what to do, she did not know what the future would bring. So she followed Sylisia, the only option she had, and her sister’s well being as the sole motivation she possessed.

    They arrived at Syl’s room without having spoken a word to each other. Maia had spent the entire drive recalling memories of his father, happy memories. Her mother had died while she gave birth Maia, and her father had always seen his wife live on in her. And now he was dead too.

    Syl gestured for Maia to undress from her worn, ragged clothes she had slept in for weeks now, and then take a bath. Maia spent a lot of time on the bath, floating on the water’s surface, motionless the entire time. She only remembered to get out when the water’s coldness had started to seep into her body. She had remained in it far too long.

    Dressing in some simple, drab clothes that had been placed on the bathroom beforehand, she walked back into Syl’s room, and found her sitting on a chair in the balcony, gazing at the garden below. She turned to glance at Maia, then sat up and walked inside, shutting the balcony doors behind.

    They stood looking at each other for a few brief moments. Syl wore an elegant suit that befitted her station, looking splendid and entirely in place with the classic wooden decor that filled her quarters. Maia on the other hand looked like a prisoner.

    “Where is she, Syl?”

    Sylisia crossed her arms, still giving Maia a thorough look. “She is safe, don’t worry. She’s being transported here as we speak.”

    Maia took her word for it. “What now?”

    Syl’s gaze shifted and met Maia’s. Maia saw the calculation behind them; Syl was thinking about how best to approach whatever she wanted to tell her. “It’s not just your father, you know. All your staff is dead too, executed.”

    Maia forced herself to banish memories of them from her mind, they were gone, and nothing would ever be the same again.

    “Even the traders and shop owners in the city.” Syl continued. “When news spread around the city about the war, people marched on the streets in mobs, finding any shop of red-hairs and burning it. Our military patrolled the streets, but simply watched while common folk beat the shit out of the unfortunate. Times being as they are, it’s easy to vent your frustration on the helpless, designated as worthless.

    “And we are winning. The war, it has been terribly one-sided so far. Soon, there will be nowhere you can go, Maia. Nowhere you could hide. The future that my father and his advisors and generals have envisioned for your people…” She trailed off, her expression enough for Maia to guess.

    “I did not know how to do it at first.” She said. “I didn’t know how to convince my father to let you live. He had no reason to, he hates your kind with passion and would raise an enormous amount of eyebrows if he did spare you. So I had to think of something that he would see acceptable, something that would please him and keep you alive.”

    Maia was confused. What could the Sovereign possibly need from her? “But you did.”

    Sylisia nodded. Then her expression changed. It was very subtle, but the wicked intent behind her eyes was very much apparent to Maia.

    “The only way, Maia, is if you accept to become my pet.”

    The silence seemed to stretch eternally. Maia did not know how to react, what to say to that. The suggestion seemed bizarre, out of place, something she would have expected to encounter on a comedic theatre show. She would have burst out laughing if the situation had been anything but the nightmare that it was, but the implication in Sylisia’s words and their intention quickly overcame her bafflement. “You can’t be serious...”

    A faint smile formed on the corner of Sylisia’s lips. “Oh, but I am.”

    The anger returned within Maia, its heat washing over her. A pet she says? She clenched her fists again, digging her nails in her flesh. “I am a human being.” She muttered, gritting her teeth. “I am a person! How do you expect me to become your pet?!”

    “You have no choice.”

    “You fucking dyke, you-”

    “Shut up!” Sylisia snapped. Maia had hit a nerve, but she remained in control. She motioned forward, walking towards Maia, looking at her with an annoyed expression. But she walked past her, towards the doors that she unlocked and opened.

    “Bring her in!” She shouted.

    Steps could be heard, growing in loudness. Five soldiers came down the hall, they brought a prisoner with them, Maia’s sister.

    “Kaia!” Maia lurched towards her sister as the soldiers entered, her anger replaced by relief.

    “Maia!” The soldiers let her go. They hugged each other tightly. “What is going on, Maia?”

    Maia backed away, holding her hands, tears returning to her face as she looked her sister in the eyes. “War. We are prisoners.” She paused a moment. “Father is dead.”

    “What?”

    “They executed him.” She said, clenching Kaia’s hands. She decided to be blunt; there was no need to keep it from her. “Sylisia… she is here to help us.”

    Kaia looked at her, the shock of the news just starting to creep on her face. She then glanced as Sylisia. “Help us how?”

    “It doesn’t concern you how.” Sylisia said. “That’s enough.” The soldiers surrounded and grabbed Kaia, dragging her out of the room.

    “No!” Maia fought, but was no match for the soldiers that restrained her while she watched her screaming sister gagged then dragged behind closing doors. “Syl, please!” She begged her. “I need more time!”

    “Restrain her.” Sylisia said, and the soldiers dragged Maia towards the huge bed, cuffing one arm and tying her against one of the bed-posts on a long, metallic chain. “Leave us.” They released Maia and retreated. Sylisia closed and locked the doors behind them.

    “You will see her again.” She said. “But not unless you agree.”

    Maia had grown still at that point, breathing heavily as she wiped her tears yet again. “You planned this, didn’t you?” She said between breaths. “You knew, you saw an opportunity, and you took it.”

    Sylisia’s smile returned, and she nodded. “So you know about my… preferences.”

    “I’ve known all along.” Maia said. “But I would have never thought you capable of this. Using my sister as leverage? You can’t do this, Syl!”

    Sylisia motioned forward, placing both hands on Maia’s cheeks, then moved her head forward even more, kissing Maia on her lips. Maia wanted to push her away, to scream, to punch her until she’d smash her skull. But she couldn’t for her sister’s sake, as Sylisia had implied.

    “You don’t know much I’ve longed for the taste of these lips.” She said as she finished her kiss. “To touch you, to feel your body next to mine.” She moved her hands around Maia’s body, kneading her breasts, running them along her thighs and between them. “It was so difficult to watch you from afar, dreaming about all the things that I could do to you. But now you’re mine.”

    Maia felt revolted, betrayed and humiliated. But she could do nothing about it beside closing her eyes and letting it happen. Was this her future?

    Sylisia retreated, walked to her bed and sat on the edge. “Come, my pet.” She ran her hand along her skirt, dragging it back. “There’s so much more I want to do with you.”

    ---

    “You can’t be serious.” Matthew said, shocked by the words that came out of her lips. “You? A… slave? Like that? Couldn’t you have done your… thing?”

    Maia’s expression was dead serious. “If I had known how at that point, I would have ground her and everyone else to unrecognizable pulp. But I’m glad I couldn’t, it’s so much more satisfying now.”

    “Now?” Matthew frowned. “What do you mean?”

    “What do you think?” She said, looking at him. “You’ve already met Sylisia.”

    Matthew’s blood ran cold at that moment. His mind raced to connect the dots, and they did in an instant. The girl, the human toilet, the one she kept at her feet, the one that knew her name, her friend. “Sylisia is her?”

    “I’d thought you would’ve figured it out faster, Matthew.” Maia said. “I thought you smarter than that.”

    “I’m sorry.” He acknowledged. “I was just distracted by your story. But there’s more, isn’t there? I understand she was a lesbian, but what she wanted seems to be relatively harmless. I’ve seen the way you look at her, your hatred runs much deeper than that.”

    Maia took a deep breath, relaxing from the anger that her memories had welled up. “Yes. There is more. A lot more.”

    “At first, “ Maia said, pushing herself back so she leaned against the pillows, “it was sexual in nature. What Sylisia wanted was simply to have fun, to experience her fantasies about having a girl between her legs. I did everything she asked.”

    The notion of having to submit herself to someone else certainly bothered her, Matthew thought. Especially the kind of way she was describing. It now made sense why she chose sexual themes when dealing with her victims.

    Still, the gap between the events of her story so far and present circumstances was far too big, and he had an incredible amount of questions. But he did not want to break the flow of her tale; he could see that she was eager to tell it, to unburden herself perhaps. Maybe she thought Matthew could somehow understand. But what was there to understand, he did not know yet. So he remained silent, and listened.

    “It was innocent, those first few weeks.” She said. “Sylisia simply wanted to use me. I think she would have prefered me to have loved her, but the war had made it impossible. Either way, she had to keep her inclination a secret. Holding my sister hostage bound me to her will with ease.”

    Matthew pushed himself back against the pillows too, crossing his arms and legs as he listened. Maia leaned her head against his shoulder, and spoke on while both watched the flames of the fireplace on the other end of the room.

    “Sylisia let me visit her every few days. I spent time with Kaia, telling her everything I found out about the events of the war. I thought she was treated well. She constantly nagged me about my relationship with Syl, but I always told her that I was only keeping Syl company, she could not afford to have us both in her presence, so Kaia would have to stay in the prison.

    “But then things started to change. Sylisia had seen me as this delicate possession until that point, a precious toy. She would care for me every day, talk to me even though I did not respond most of the time, cuddle with me while sleeping. It was like I was some sort of teddy bear to her. But as weeks went by, that spark of initial excitement had faded, and her games grew more rough. She started caring less about her toy’s well being and more about getting the most out of it.

    “I did not understand the change at the time, but I do now by experience. I could not understand how this sweet, innocent girl could transform so much and become this monster, but I now understand that it’s not her that changed, but my image in her eyes. I was not a human anymore, I was her pet, and she gradually found out that she could do anything to her plaything. Thus, to get back that initial excitement, she had to invent more interesting games.”

    Matthew wondered if there was a double meaning in her words. Though circumstances differed, his situation was still similar to the one she was describing. She saw him as an interesting toy in the beginning, but would it fade away in her eyes as time went on? Of course it would. The more appropriate question was: What then?

    “One day, “ she continued, “ she told me I could not call her by her name anymore, I had to call her master from that point on. Her games grew more forceful, humiliating. She started making me kiss her feet, praise her as if she was a divine being, made me beg to please her. And she started walking me around the palace perimeters, held on a leash tied on a collar around my neck like a dog.”

    Matthew was honestly surprised with her calmness considering the words that came out of her mouth. She was much more composed than earlier. It’s like she was switching between her past self and present one, two entirely different people. He wanted to find out where the dividing line lay.

    “It’s funny.” She said, letting out a small laugh. “I lost my virginity to her. She would put on this wooden stick with a flat base on her crotch, tying it around her waist, and… “ she trailed, sighing.

    She remained silent for a little while after that, lost in her memories again. Matthew needed to bring her back. “And I’m guessing you don’t need a wooden stick for her in return.”

    A smile crept on her face. “Trust me, Matthew.” She said. “No, single person that you have seen here would want to be in her place. Nine years is a long time as my toy.

    “Anwyay, another day, she announced that she would be making a trip and visit her father in one of the captured cities, and that I would accompany her.”

    ---

    Maia watched the trees of the late-summer countryside pass by as the train sped through it, leaning her head against the glass on the window while Sylisia read a book. Maia had grown weary, numb. Her life had lost almost all purpose, and now she was away from the only light that kept her clinging against the dark abyss of depression. She did not know how long she would be away from her sister.

    They arrived on the city of Kirs in four days. It was the third largest city of Maia’s nation, located halfway between the border and the capital in the coast. Its buildings were ridden with bullet holes, some collapsed entirely from artillery shells, while half of the city on the opposite bank of the river had been scorched by fire.

    They drove through the streets in a car, both her and Sylisia in the backseat. Watching the city behind the window, Maia slowly acknowledged that she was one of the more fortunate of her kind. Despite the situation she found herself in, she still had a bed to sleep on, warm meals and relative enclosure form spiteful eyes. Outside, she saw hunger, she could smell the lingering scent of rape, and could feel the touch of death. There was nothing but despair on the faces of the few redheads she saw wandering through the streets. The army had rained down hard upon the helpless population after victory.

    Helplessness is what she felt too in those moments. She could do nothing about it, about the grand injustice that was happening outside the glass pane. She felt weak, utterly useless, and hated herself for submitting to Sylisia. That old sense of warmth started creeping through her veins, begging for release. Anger, rage that threatened to explode inside of her. She clenched her fists, gritted her teeth, tensing every muscle in her body.

    Remember your sister.

    She fought it, suppressing it with every cost. She had to. There was no point in her anger, it would be no use but to have her own live forfeited along with her sister’s. Kaia depended on her, and she would not fail her.

    “I see.” Sylisia said. She had been watching Maia the entire time. “That anger you told me about. I thought I had given you plenty of opportunity to go crazy so far, but it seems I was wrong. I may have to redouble my efforts then.”

    Maia remained silent, ignoring her teasing.

    They arrived at the designated HQ, only to find out that the Sovereign had left for a camp outside the city. He and most of his generals were attending a demonstration by the army, but Sylisia couldn’t find out what kind of demonstration, and did not want to pass the opportunity. They left for the camp immediately.

    It was a half an hour’s drive outside the city, a huge mass wooden, barn-like buildings constructed in lines, entirely surrounded by barbed fences and wires. Maia had thought it was an army camp at first, but as they got closer and saw mass of red hair lined up throughout them, she understood. It was an internment camp. She shivered at the thought of what a demonstration now meant.

    “Remember, “ Sylisia said as they arrived and stepped out of the car. “Do not speak unless spoken to. Do not address anyone by their name, only master and mistress. Keep your head down. Stay two steps behind me. Sit on your shins next to my seat.”

    Maia replied with a small nod.

    “And put this on.” She gave Maia the collar. There was a moment of hesitation, but she did what Sylisia asked. She needed to get through the ordeal, resisting would be unwise.

    She did not look up as they moved, but knew they approached some kind of platform. Guards surrounded it, and some very important people sat on the seats, shaded from the heat of the sun.

    “Ah, Sylisia!” It was the Sovereign who spoke. He had a deep, characteristic voice, always spoke on a very leveled tone. He sported an impressive moustache, but his defining characteristic was his missing left hand that he had lost on a border skirmish between the two nations back when he was young. It was the man that had killed her father, and doomed millions to their deaths. “I’m glad you made it. And I see you brought your little pet with you.”

    A murmur of suppressed laughter arose all around her. Maia could feel their eyes on her skin. She was standing out a lot with her bright, scarlet hair in the midst of the drakhairs.

    “Thank you for inviting me, father!” Sylisia said, bowing. “Victory is ever in your favor.” They climbed on the wooden platform, and Sylisia started greeting all the most important generals by their names as she went past them. She at stopped a seat before his father’s.

    Maia could sense it, though it was very faint. What it was, she did not know. It was like trying to describe light to a blind man or sound to a deaf one, an entirely new sense. The closest approximation was like feeling the weight of a presence upon your body. It vanished as quickly as she became aware of it.

    And Sylisia still hadn’t spoken a name. An unbearable urge forced Maia to shift her eyes, just enough to understand what made Sylisia silent. She saw the shoes of a woman, black stockings and a dark skirt. She could not fight the urge to look up more, so she shifted her eyes again. She saw a woman with sunglasses and a large black hat staring at her.

    Sylisia’s scowl that Maia saw on the corner of her eye made her lower her head immediately, but the afterimage of the woman remained, especially a little detail: buns of golden hair behind her head, just beneath the rim of her hat.

    Sylisia cleared her throat. “Lady Aria!”

    “Hmm?” A sound came from the woman. “Oh, hello dear! That is one very special pet you have there!” Her voice was melodic. Who is this woman?

    “Thank you.” Sylisia said.

    “What is your name?”

    “Her name is-”

    “I did not ask you.” She cut Silysia off. She cut the Sovereign’s daughter off, right in front of the Sovereign himself. Who is this woman? A little silence stretched before Maia became aware of the meaning of her words. She looked up, confused. Sylisia was glaring at her with another scowl, nodding for her to respond.

    “My-, my name is Maia.” She said without looking back at the woman, again lowering her head instead.

    “Maia...” The woman said, her voice trailing. “Anyway, I’m terribly sorry to have kept you on you feet, dear Sylisia.”

    Sylisia bowed, then tug on Maia’s leash. She sat next to her father, and Maia rested on her shins beside her seat. She could feel the anger emanating from Sylisia. And somehow, Maia felt disappointed that Syl had lied to her about not knowing the golden-haired woman, as absurdly as it seemed. That woman seemed to command a huge amount of respect.

    “What kind of demonstration is this, Father?” Sylisia said.

    “Not a demonstration.” The Sovereign said, his voice unchanged. “We are here to oversee proceedings of formal labour transfer back to our home before we head towards the front line.”

    “You are shipping them off to work as slave labor?”

    The Sovereign sighed a little at Sylisia’s lack of formality. “Yes. Although it is summer, their kind are starving. Two million are already dead due to lack of food, we are going to make them work for every crumb of it.”

    Two million. Maia shivered.

    “Logical.” Sylisia said. “What about those who can’t?”

    “What do you think?” He said. “They will be disposed of, of course. We will cleanse this land, rebuild it for us, they will provide the labour. Anyone that incapable or unwilling is of no use to us.”

    A barrage of rifle shots could be heard at that moment. Maia raised her head slightly, enough to get a view of the camp in front of them, and saw the falling bodies inside, all redhairs. Executed.

    Keep it together.

    “They look like able-bodied men.” Sylisia said. “Why kill them?”

    “Deserters, cowards, thieves. They are to be made an example.”

    “Ah.” Sylisia watched as another line of men were brought in view. Maia took a look at them too, she had never seen such fear on anyone’s face.

    “That one looks cute.” Sylisia said, pointing at one of them, barely eighteen.  “What did he do?”

    The Sovereign waved a hand, and one of the General’s officers approached. He asked the officer about his penalty.

    “Stole a loaf of bread, Sovereign.” The officer replied.

    “There you have it.” The Sovereign said.

    Sylisia stood up, turning at him “Can I try?”

    The Sovereign looked at her. “Try?”

    “Yes.” She said. “You’ve taught me to hunt with the rifle well enough. Let me try it myself!”

    “You want to kill him yourself?”

    “To put him down, you mean.”

    The Sovereign paused a little, contemplating the strange request before answering, “I don’t see why not.” He turned at the officer again. “Give her your rifle.”

    The officer obliged. Maia dared to look at Sylisia, to see the smile on her face. She really dead mean her words. Maia was horrified. How could a person transform so much? How could the innocent girl that she once knew become willing to kill just to try it out?

    The officer headed back and told the guards to separate the unfortunate boy while Sylisia took a look at the rifle, felt its weight and tried its aim. Then she pointed it at the boy, barely more than a hundred yards away, every bit confident in her posture.

    She pulled the trigger and hit the boy on his right thigh, causing him to fall into the ground, screaming. Warmth exploded within Maia, and she knew she would not be able to hold it back this time. It was too much, some kind of twisted evil had befallen her world.

    “Not bad, but I know you are a better shot than that.” The Sovereign waved a hand again, and the guards forced the bleeding boy to get back up and stand on his still working leg. He still screamed the whole time, but stood. The darkhairs had instilled such fear in him that he still obeyed.

    “Still getting a feel for the rifle.” Sylisia aimed again. Her next shot landed on his shoulder, further mortal screams erupting from the lad as he fell on the ground again.

    It would be the end for Maia. There was no hope that she could cling to anymore. It was useless to still pretend, one day she would end just like that boy while Sylisia played one last game with her. At least she would chose how to end, and hope that Kaia would be given a relatively painless death.

    The next shot came, announcing the final death of the boy while Maia lowered her head and closed her eyes, gathering all the strength and control of her shaking form that she could muster. She wanted to hurt her, to hurt all of them badly.

    A hand tugged her chin up, and the blue eyes soothed her every fibre instantly. They were marvellous, the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen. She couldn’t understand how it was possible for one to have such eye color, it transcended both races.

    “Calm down, dear.” The golden-haired, blue-eyed woman said. “Least you wreck havoc to this entire place.”

    “I…” Maia did not know what to say, she did not understand the meaning of her words. Was she being sarcastic? “Who are you?”

    The woman, Aria, smiled. She then motioned her head forward and spoke softly on Maia’s ear. “Play the part that you have played so far for a little longer, we’ll meet again in the future. You won’t regret it.”

    “Again, the blonde.” Matthew said. “She’s important to your story, isn’t she?”

    Maia gave him a soft smile. “Of course. But it’s the reason why she’s important that is interesting. I think you’ll like it.”

    They were both sitting on the floor, leaning against the base of the bed, much closer to the firepit. Matthew thought the orange firelight gave Maia an even more mesmerizing appearance. The way the light glowed in the middle of the greens in her eye, and the fiery hue that it gave her hair. Why was he thinking about superficial things like that now?

    “How do you mean?” He said.

    “Let me finish. You’ll understand soon enough.”

    “Very well. I assume you heeded her words?”

    “Yes, I did. They were strangely comforting. I didn’t see her that day anymore, and watched for quite a while as a pile of redheaded bodies formed within the camp. It was a rather gut wrenching experience.”

    A silent chuckle escaped Matthews nose. Maia turned to look at him, raising an eyebrow.

    “What?” He said.

    “Is it that funny to you?”

    He looked at her, trying to decide if she was being serious. “I don’t think my fellow kidnaped friends found it funny to be trapped in your pants while you worked out.”

    Her eyes stayed locked with his for a few moments. She said nothing, then turned her stare to the fire. There was something inexplicable behind her expression as it was bathed in the flickering light of the fire. It was entirely different from when she used his friends, much more concerned, regretful or perhaps even guiltful.

    What the hell?

    “Anyway.” She said, resuming. “As I said, I remained calm, focused. I wanted to see the trip through, hoping there was some kind of truth in her words. But I was aware that the hope she gave me was exactly what I needed, whether it was real or not. I wasn’t concerned about the latter.

    “Sylisia though, she grew jealous of our little exchange, I think. In response to that day, her games grew even rougher. I wouldn’t escape a night without bruises all over my body anymore.”

    ---

    Two months later, the winds of autumn blowed through the streets of Karai, the once capital of Maia’s nation, a nation that didn’t exist anymore. It was also her home, the streets and alleys she had grown up in, the people she had learned to love, the natural freedom that had come with it, something that she had missed so much.

    She still did. Karai’s streets were crawling with darkhairs now, unhindered in their violence. They smashed stores and stole anything they could find. They went from house or apartment to the other, plundering everything in their path. They violated whomever they could find, played sick games that defied the meaning of being human and much more. Still, the city as a whole was undamaged, having been taken without much fuss.

    “Come.” Sylisia tugged on Maia’s leash. She lead her towards the entrance of a former hotel in the center of the city. It was ten stories tall, the tallest building in the city, and Sylisia had secured its top floor. “I need to relax after the train ride.”

    Entering the suite, Maia grew the courage to ask Sylisia something she desperately needed to know for weeks now, but dared not ask. “Syl, “ she said, then she froze, she forgot to call her by her title.

    The smack on the face was inevitable and sent Maia on the floor where she kept her head down. “I’m sorry, master.”

    “What do you want?”

    “I just want to know if my sister is well, I haven’t seen or heard from her in such a long time.”

    “She is.” Her response was swift. She then turned and headed for the bathroom. Her response had been what Maia had expected, anything but comforting.

    She turned towards the windows facing west, an array of unbroken panes that stretched the entirety of the wall, lined with the dusty decor, beyond which she could see almost the entirety of the city. The whole room was layered in dust, war being what it was. The sun was setting in the distance, tinting the room with its orange-red glow. But Maia’s mind was elsewhere, something that concerned her since the moment she arrived at the city.

    The presence.

    She did not like it. It was different, like a humming in the back of her head. It did not carry the weight that it had previously, but there was a certain quality to it that she could not discern. She did not understand it, what it meant. That’s why she found it discomforting.

    “Hey!” Sylisia’s voice came from the bathroom. “Come here.”

    Maia duly obliged. She found Sylisia with hands crossed, staring at the dirty toilet that was missing its lid. “There is no running water.”

    Maia looked within the toilet. The bottom was empty. It was a strange sight to see no water on the bottom of a toilet she thought. She then looked back at Sylisia, expecting an order, though not knowing what she could do about it.

    “What am I supposed to do now?” Sylisia said.

    There was a strange tone of rhetoric on her voice, Maia thought. “Do you want me to fetch a bucket of water?”

    Sylisia laughed at that. “Like I’m going to leave you out of my sight now. We are not back at home where there is nowhere for you to hide. No, I think a pet of your kind possesses other, more interesting ways of serving me. Especially my basic needs.”

    Maia frowned. She did not understand. Basic needs? What did she mean b- Her eyes widened. “No!” She said, shaking her head and backing a few steps. “You can’t make me do that!”

    “Maia.” Sylisia said. She used Maia’s name, she never used Maia’s name anymore unless there was an urgent seriousness in her tone. “Get down on your knees, unbutton my skirt. Do it now.”

    “Please!” Maia begged, tears welling up for the umpteenth time in the past months. “What have I ever done to deserve that?”

    “Nothing.” Sylisia said. “It’s your life’s calling to serve me however I please.”

    Maia looked Sylisia in the eyes, there was no sympathy for her in them. She only saw the wicked need to humiliate Maia further. Sylisia saw the opportunity, not that she needed it, and took it. Maia quickly became resigned to the fact that she would have to do it, no matter what.

    “Please…” she begged again in instinct, but fell to her knees anyhow.

    “Quicker.” Sylisia said. “I really need to relieve myself.”

    Maia took a deep breath, then etched closer, unbuttoned her black skirt with weak arms and stripped them down. Then she did the same with her cotton briefs, exposing her vagina. She had pleased it so many times in the past few months, tasked to keeping it clean, shaved, tending its every need. But now it wasn’t a sexual organ to her, it was much more degrading than that.

    “Come now.“ Sylisia said, spreading her legs apart a little. “Don’t be shy!”

    Maia closed her eyes, taking more deep breaths, calming her self, taking control of her body. She moved her head forward, touching her crotch with her forehead. She paused for a moment until all hope of it all being just a teasing had faded away. Then, heavy knocks came from the entrance of the suite.

    Sylisia groaned in frustration. “Damn it!” She pulled Maia on her hair, away from her, then put her pants and skirt back on. “Don’t think you’re lucky.” She said, then went outside to answer the knocks.

    Maia’s frame fell on her thighs, tears dripping on the ceramic floor below. She remained on her fetal position, listening to Sylisia’s steps. Was this how it was going to be in the future?

    The door outside opened, and there was an unusual moment of silence. “Greetings, dear Sylisia.”

    Maia’s eyes shot open. She recognized the voice immediately.

    “My lady, “ Sylisia said, bearing a hint of fear in it, “what are you doing here?”

    “I came to visit, of course.” Aria said. “Such a swift victory, who would have thought?”

    “Indeed, my lady. But what are you doing here.”

    Again, a moment of silence. “I came to see your pet.”

    “My pet? But, if I may say so my lady, this city is crawling with redheads, you can get yourself as many pets as you want.”

    Aria laughed. “Pets is something I have in abundance, dear. But I am interested in yours.”

    “Why? What is it that intrigues you so much about her. She’s just another redhead.”

    “I do not like your tone, young lady.”

    Maia could almost feel Sylisia’s anger radiate through the walls. She stood up, brushed her hair and wiped her tears away, forcing herself to appear strong, whatever that meant.

    “Maia!” Aria said. “Come outside, dear.”

    It’s like she knows everything. No wonder people respect her so much. Maia pulled the bathroom door open and stepped outside. The sun had set, and the interior was dimming rapidly.

    Maia glanced at her for less then a second, then lowered her head immediately, eyes on the floor. But her appearance did not fail to send a wave of reverence through Maia’s body. The golden hair was as impressive as the previous times she had seen her.

    “Ah.” She said. “There you are. Come here.”

    Maia obliged. Aria too stepped closer and then put her hands on Maia’s cheeks, motioning for her to raise her head. Again, her ocean-blue eyes sent a shiver down Maia’s spine. It felt like she wasn’t even human, but something much more than that.

    “I’ve been looking forward to seeing you again.” Aria said. “I’m sorry to have delayed my arrival, but it was necessary.”

    Maia remained silent, not daring to speak, only switching between both of Aria’s eyes. Sylisia was closing the door behind them when Aria turned her head. “Don’t close it.”

    “Why?”

    “There’s a gift I’ve brought for Maia.”

    What? Maia thought.

    “What?” Sylisia said.

    “Yes.” Aria said. Then she raised her voice, “Bring her in.”

    Her?

    Heavy steps came forward, and a few men entered the room, bringing a redhead with them. All of Maia’s strength faded in an instant and Maia burst in tears again. It was her sister.

    “Kaia!” She said, moving out of Aria’s grip without care. Her sister looked up, and smiled weakly. Maia rushed towards her, embracing her.

    “What in heavens is she doing here?” Sylisia said, but Aria ignored her.

    “Leave us.” Aria ordered the men. They did, leaving the four of them alone in the darkening room.

    “Hello, sister.” Kaia said, returning Maia’s embrace, barely any strength in her arms.

    “I’ve missed you so so much!” Maia said.

    “I know.”

    Maia backed from her embrace, taking a good look at her. It was then, up close, when she saw how weak she was. Her eyes were sunken in their sockets, her skin was sagging a little and her bones were much more pronounced. Maia could even see the bluish spots, marks that she knew from her own skin all too well.

    “What have they done to you?”

    Kaia smiled weakly again, and moved forward, planting the side of her head on Maia’s chest and embracing her instead. “Don’t worry about me. It’ll all be over soon. I just wanted to see you again.”

    “I’ll tell you what they have done to her.” Aria said.

    Maia turned, looking at Aria while still holding her sister in her arms. But Aria was looking at Sylisia instead.

    “Beaten.” She said. “Tortured. Malnourished. Stuck on a dark, damp cell. Deprived of sunlight for months. And of course, raped almost every day. Such things take their toll on a person.”

    A sense of deep, disturbing coldness shot through Maia’s veins. She looked back at her sister, unable to shake the feeling that it was all her fault. While she thought she was protecting her, she was in fact condemning her?

    “I did not tell the prison guards to do that.” Sylisia said defensively, crossing her arms.

    “You did not forbid it either.” Aria said.

    Sylisia groaned. “Why does it even matter! They are redheads!”

    Aria smiled at that, looking back at Maia.

    “I’m so sorry sis.” Maia said, kissing her sister on the head and hugging her more tightly. “I’m so very sorry!”

    “No.” Kaia said. “It’s not your fault.”

    She moved out of Maia’s embrace, looking her in the eyes before her gaze shifted to Sylisia who was visibly enraged by the situation. “Aria told me what she did to you, what she made you do just so I could live.” She looked back at Maia, wearing that weak smile. “You won’t have to anymore.”

    “Yes.” Sylisia said. “Because you’ll both be dead by tomorrow.”

    Maia shot Sylisia an angry glance, but Kaia’s hands brought her back to her sister. “I love you, Maia. You know that. But you won’t have to care about me anymore, I am broken and there’s no turning back for me.”

    Maia frowned with her glistening eyes. “What are you talking about?”

    “Listen to me.” She said. “Stay strong, for me, ok?” She moved a step back, looked at Aria for a moment and nodded at her, “Thank you.”

    Aria nodded back.

    “Kaia!” Maia grabbed her arm. “Why are you talking like this? I won’t let anything happen to you anymore! Not unless it’s over my dead body!”

    “Sister.” Kaia said. “Tell me that you love me, please?”

    “What? Of course I do! I love you! Kaia I-”

    “Shhh.” Kaia put her hand over Maia’s mouth, closed in and planted a kiss on her cheek. “Try to forgive me.”

    She then turned towards the opposite end of the room, took a deep breath, and ran with all the remaining strength she had, throwing herself against a window pane. The glass shattered easily, and Kaia disappeared behind.

    Maia raised a hand towards the hole in the window. “Kaia… you can’t… “

    She was gone.

    Maia remained like that for a long while, motionless. Total silence reigned within the now dark room. She wanted to scream, she wanted to cry out, she wanted to jump after her, to save her, to protect her. But she remained motionless.

    Kaia was gone.

    Maia dropped on her knees, covered her mouth with her hands, and slowly shook her head. It was all some kind twisted dream. It had to be. Her own sister couldn’t just have committed suicide. No.

    The truth hurt too much.

    She wanted to scream so much, it felt like she had to do that. But she still remained silent. Instead, fire burned inside of her, and there was no holding back anymore. She had finally lost everything. She was finally free.

    “You.” She said, getting back on her feet and looking at Sylisia’s shocked form. “It’s all your fault.”

    Her heart beat rapidly, sweat pouring from every inch of her skin, muscles tensed all throughout her body, but she still took a step towards Sylisia.

    “All. Your. Fault!”

    Then it came. It was like an exploding heart beat, feeling it it’s reverberation with every sense. It was a stirring deep inside of her an awakening that she did not understand. And it forced her to her knees again. It threatened to tear her apart, like it had done so many times in the past now, but never with such intensity. Her whole body began to spasm.

    “That’s right.” Aria said, walking closer. “Just let go. Doesn’t it feel good?”

    It felt anything but.

    “Oh, that’s right. It’s much more pronounced in you. It might be even painful. But deep beneath, it feels good, doesn’t it?”

    It felt uncontainable. She did not understand what was trying to burst out.

    “It feels incredibly close to what anger feels like, doesn’t it? Pure rage, a sense of wrathful fury, its burn coursing through every vein. And it wants to get out.”

    How did she know that? “What… is... going on?” She said through a clenched jaw.

    Aria crouched beside Maia’s body. “It is power, Maia. You were born with it. But you never knew you had it inside of you. You never would have unless triggered somehow. And trust me, to do that you need burrow deep inside your worst nightmares. And now it wants out.”

    It felt like she was being burned alive. “Pl- please!”

    “Tell me Maia, do you know how birds learn to fly?”

    Maia, despite the dreadful pain, managed to crane her head sideways. “W- what?”

    “Their mothers throw them off their nests. They either learn, or die in the process.”

    Aria’s hand came down around Maia’s throat, and she was lifted up with inhuman strength, dragged across the room.

    “True fear. It’s the last ingredient. I hope you won’t turn out a disappointment.”

    The next thing Maia saw was a sky with its first visible stars among the pieces of broken glass and strands of her red hair fluttering about, all in free fall as she was about to join her sister.

    Then she exploded.

    “You what?”

    “That’s what it felt like.”

    Matthew was confused. “You should have fallen ten stories. How did you even survive?”

    “Because it wasn’t that much of a fall for me.”

    Matthew grew even more confused. “I’m not following.”

    Maia smiled, understanding Matthew’s confusion. She rose up, taking just a step closer to the firepit, still watching the swirling flames within. “Reducing a person’s size is one thing. They do not retain the fragility of a normal human body. They become a little more durable, bendable, can resist more physical trauma than at their normal size. But if it’s you who changes size instead… “

    Maia’s smile grew broader. It was the smile he had come to know with at the start of this journey. Not a smile of the meekly girl she has been telling about in her story, but that of the god-like being that he'd forgotten he was in the presence of. It took a moment for him to grasp the meaning of her words, and a cold shiver ran down his spine when he did.

    “You… grew. Didn’t you?” He said.

    She looked at him, still sitting on the floor. He was her size, but for some reason felt even smaller than when he was at her feet.

    “It’s called size-shifting.” She said. “It works both ways.”

    “But… “ Countless scenarios ran through his mind about the consequences of such an ability. “How is it even possible?”

    She chuckled. “Are you really surprised, after all you’ve seen so far?”

    He knew he shouldn’t, but it still felt like he’d just discovered that the world was round. He could vividly imagine her having her way with an entire city now, and for some reason it felt even more awe and fear-inspiring at the same time. If she could grow, she could- That’s when it all clicked for him.

    “Ah, now I get it.” He said. “That is the reason why you are trapped on a space station, isn’t it? You can’t grow your way out of it.”

    Her smile faded a little, then she looked back at the fire. “I miss it.” She said. “I haven’t felt it for such a long time now.” She brought her arms up, looking at her palms as she clenched and unclenched her fists. Then she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “It is very different from being normal-sized.”

    “Well, ” he said, “it shouldn’t be possible in the first place. But how so?”

    “It’s difficult to describe.” She said. “It feels like you’re being crushed from all sides, both inwardly and outwardly. At first, every nerve in your body is telling you that huge amounts of pressure is coming from all sides, like an invisible force pinning you to the ground. It feels very close to being on the surface of a planet whose gravity is several times bigger than normal.”

    “Because, “ Matthew added, “your body shouldn’t be able to withstand the weight! How could it? And how tall did you become anyway?”

    “About three hundred feet.” She said. “I don’t know how or why, and I stopped caring a long time ago about that.”

    “Three hundred feet…” he trailed, trying to render an imagine in his head. It wasn’t too difficult for obvious reasons.

    “But the best part is when you try to move.” She continued, looking back at Matthew, eyes awfully similar to the first time he’d seen them. “Your body is telling you that you shouldn’t be able to move even an inch, yet you can. It tells you that you shouldn’t be able to breath, but you do like always. Your arms should be ripped from their sockets, your spine should break, your legs should shatter. But they don’t.”

    Her enthusiasm was astounding. She really was a completely different person from the one she told him about in her story. And it irked him that he wasn’t sure which was the real one.

    “And when do you move,” she continued, “the power that drives your body is so incredible, it… “ she trailed, and drew in another breath.

    “I think I should should start at the beginning.”

    ---

    Maia opened her eyes, looking at a sky full of stars.

    She was alive. How?

    She was sprawled on the ground, feeling like she was buried underneath a shallow layer of sand on a beach. Instinct made her move her arms, easily breaking through the sand. She brought them in front of her face, their forms slightly lit by the moonlight. It felt like moving them under water, they felt heavy. Her whole body did. Strange sounds came from all directions, a confusing mass of indiscernible signals that felt somehow familiar but very unnatural at the same time.

    She rose up, her mind still trying to make sense of all the different, alien sensations that shot from all of her senses, but the one she focused on was that sensation of sand sliding off her chest and torso, tracing the shape of her breasts and making her aware of her nudity. She was naked, out in the open.

    She covered them with her arms and looked around. Another eire feeling, this time from her sight.

    The first thing her mind associated her surroundings was with a carpet of candlelights. She sat on a dark area encircled by dots of light that spread all around her for hundreds of yards. It reminded her of childhood memories, people mourning war heroes on the grand plaza.

    But the lights weren’t flickering, their sources were not flames. Though the dots did not illuminate their surroundings much, it was the shadows cast by things around them that were difficult for Maia’s mind to place. She needed a few moments, but with each passing one, the pattern became clearer.

    Rows of street lamps barely making the cobbled streets beneath them visible, lights behind rows and columns of windows indicating all too familiar buildings, sets of white or red ones that made them out to come from cars. Everything was too small, like a vast toyland of unimaginable detail that was just too absurd to believe it to be true.

    Then a shadow on the streets moved, and Maia flinched in instinct. She had to put a hand behind her to keep herself from falling over, placing it on a box-shaped thing that gave away to her weight in an instant, crushing what must have been one of those buildings with too much ease, like it was made of the sand.

    Maia looked at it and billowing shadows cast by the dust coming from it. She had to squint, barely able to make out the area in the dark, but she could see the vast patch destroyed by her prone form, and the burrowing paths where her arms and legs had ripped through those buildings.

    But her mind told her to look back at what that moving shadow was, and she did. Knowing what to look for, she could see the little shadows cast by the lamps on the streets. She knew what they had to be, but moving ones?

    She moved closer, on all fours since her movements still felt much too weird. She tried to be careful, placing a hand on a street, feeling the weight of it make a dent on the cobbles. Tucking her hair back with her other hand, she lowered her head to take a closer look. The shadows moved.

    Maia flinched again, but much less so this time. She followed the shadows as they backed away until one of them moved right beneath one of the lamps, and Maia’s mouth gaped.

    The soldier was much too real. He stopped right there with a rifle on his hand pointing at the ground, taking a look back at Maia. She could just about make his squinting eyes out, he must have been barely able to see her.

    It cannot be!

    She felt a desperate urge to feel his tangibleness, he simply couldn't be this real! She moved her hand, pointing with her index finger and slowly reached forward. She needed to touch him, to poke him; it felt like the natural thing to do. He didn’t react at first, but as the finger became visible by the lamps, he took a step back, eyes widening. The he held his rifle up, and shot at it.

    It was like a spider had suddenly flinched to take a bite at her finger, and Maia did what her instinct told her to do: to jump he back as fast and far as she could.

    The next moment, she found herself flying through the air, adrenaline shooting through her veins before she crashed down on the ground. It wasn’t a simple fall-over, she ground along the surface, plowing through rows of buildings and rendering each one to rubble and dust.

    All lights then flickered, the area immediately around her growing entirely dark. She could even hear the thundering sounds all around her, and could feel the dust-filled wind tracing along her skin. But the image of the soldier was the one thing etched most on her mind at that moment.

    She stood up on her legs, barely able to balance herself. She drew in deep breaths, and tried to recall the last thing she remembered before she woke up.

    Kaia!

    Tears welled up. Then she remembered the golden haired woman, Aria, and what she had told her before she threw her through the window, something about a power deep inside of her. But what the hell was this?

    Think! Maia!

    She looked around again, beyond the ruined patch around her. She took another look at the shadows, cast by the still working street lamps and the dim moonlight; she looked at the shapes they formed. Little by little, she recognized the city, her city, and her home, Karai. And she stood far taller than any building in it.

    She shook her head. “Think, Maia!”

    Even her voice felt different. It felt like she could sense its ripples travel through her body, and the faint echoes streaming all around her. Then, more lights flickered.

    She looked up. They weren’t really flickering, but bursting instead, like… it was gunfire. A moment later, she felt small stings all over her skin.

    She stood still in the dark, the stings much too harmless for her. It wasn’t real. It didn’t make sense, and it didn’t even feel real. Maybe it was some twisted form of afterlife, something designed to confuse the hell out of a spirit, like a test.

    She stopped her mind from wandering into the ridiculous. But her situation was ridiculous, in every imaginable way in fact. She didn’t know what she needed to do, so she followed instinct. And it still told her to confirm the realness of all this.

    She observed the bursting gunfire, spotted a particular group of denser ones, and took a step towards them.

    She took the step like she would normally do, but it was too much in her current predicament. It crashed through another building, sending its bricks flying through the air before her foot settled behind it, but not before Maia had lost her balance and fell over, again.

    She managed to cushion her fall with her hands this time, but the buildings were still far too weak. Her hands plowed through them and then her breasts followed, wrecking what was left as she fell on her front with a heavy thud.

    Rising up, she felt a wet sensation on her right forearm, and felt it with her right hand. It was wet, soft, and warm.

    “Heavens!” She said with a weak voice, her whole body shuddering at what it meant. “What is this!”

    The gunfire intensified.

    She took another few deep breaths, calming herself, then walked, carefully this time. She managed to stay on her feet, striding towards the denser group of gunfire coming her way. She had to look at where she was stepping in order to keep her balance, and became aware of the enormous power of her steps.

    Entering areas that were somewhat illuminated, she could see her steps literally shaking the ground, shattering windows and causing countless cracks on structures. Their heaviness felt very real, but her mind still wouldn’t believe what she was seeing.

    No, she needed to take a look at those soldiers.

    She closed the gap quickly found herself upon them. The soldiers stopped their fire, gawking at her form. Maia drew in a deep breath, and crouched down, trying to pick one up between her thumb and index finger.

    He burst like a grape.

    She let out a high-pitched scream, and barely managed to keep herself from jumping back again, only taking a step back instead. She held her hand away from her body and felt the crushed remains of the soldier fly from her grip. She looked away too, closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. She had just killed someone with a pinch like it was nothing.

    No, it can’t be real! She managed to keep herself from throwing up too, though there was nothing to throw up. Calm down!

    Determined, she opened her eyes and brought her arm close to her face. She couldn’t see it properly, so she lowered it underneath one of the still working street lamps. Both her fingers were painted in crimson red.

    She gritted her teeth again, another instinct telling her to wipe her fingers on a nearby building. She shredded its whole facade sideways instead, revealing its interior. There were people inside, redheads.

    She watched them, stunned by the realness and detail of it all. They were scared, shouting something indiscernible at each other, crawling around the cracked floors. One of them hung preciously on a piece of wood jutting from the highest floor, facing three stories down. Maia thought she could hear the man shouting for help, though she clearly saw it.

    Do something.

    She stood still, watching in shock. She was afraid. The man’s hands slid a little, and woman approached him, trying to help. She reached out an arm, but it was futile, the man was too far from her.

    Do something!

    She was too afraid, afraid of what might happen if she did. The woman made a last attempt at trying to grab his hand, but the man slid further down along the piece of wood before his grip failed him entirely and he fell on the ground.

    Maia felt coldness spread throughout her body. Why was she just standing there? The man survived though, still twitching on the ground. The woman looked down, still shouting things before she stood up, looking around in panic for a way to escape the building.

    That’s when she saw Maia, and grew still in an instant. She saw her feet at first, looking at them like a small kitten that didn’t know much better. As the shock on her face grew, she traced Maia’s crouched, dark form with her sight until she saw a glimpse her face, and shook her head in disbelief.

    Then the whole building collapsed, dragging the woman with it as it buried the man and everyone else still inside beneath the rubble. Maia stood up in shock, covering her mouth with her hands. She had just killed again, her kind at that. And she could have saved them, but chose not to.

    Why? Tears flowed down her cheeks. “Please don’t let this be real!”

    She ran. Again, it felt like a natural thing to do. But where to? The lights of the whole city flickered as she did, silhouettes of dust and smoke casting dim shadows from the moonlight, her steps causing massive damage everywhere. She spotted a group of soldiers running away from her and it made her stop.

    Darkhairs. It’s all your fault!

    She took one step towards them, anger growing within, then another, and the third was a stomp right on their arm-rising forms.

    She felt their bursting bodies for a very brief moment before her foot buried itself deep beneath the surface, shattering all of it around the foot and sending massive chunks of concrete-embedded earth flying through the dark of the night. She even saw the shock wave with her own eyes as it traveled around her, extinguishing every light on its path and collapsing almost all buildings in her vicinity.

    She remained still for a long while after that, thinking about what she had just done. Fires started growing in spots of those collapsed structures, bathing her body with their brightening light. They revealed the damage to the city too, her city. She had killed half a dozen people in that building she tried to wipe her bloodied fingers on, what about the hundreds she was looking at that moment? Darkhairs, redheads, it hadn't mattered.

    She started laughing. It couldn’t be real. She had gone mad. In what possible way could any of it be real?

    The drain on her body came in an instant. But it was like she summoned it, like it heeded her calling. She wanted out, she wasn’t ready for any of it. It was too much.

    So she faded, everything becoming a blur. Next thing she knew, she found herself awakening to a sky full of stars again, but everything around her was normal, except entirely destroyed. And she was still naked, feeling the chill of the autumn winds on her bare skin gushing from the heat of the spreading fires.

    She stood up walked around without much thought, like a lost puppy, her movements becoming automatic. She spotted the body of someone leaned against the side of a half-collapsed wall. She approached it, noting it to be that of a darkhaired officer, blood running from the side of his head. But his coat looked fine. It took her some time before she stripped the body out of it.

    Afterwards, she walked around some more before she decided to head into one of more intact buildings, finding a thrown about couch on which she laid down and closed her eyes, burying herself within the coat as incredible exhaustion and trance-like state pushed her into a very deep sleep.

    It was like night turned into day in one blink.

    She stood up immediately, feeling a gaping hole in her stomach and unbearable thirst. For a few moments, she truly thought it had all been a dream, but as she walked out of the building with her bare feet, she grew weaker with each step, looking at the destruction all around her.

    It had been real.

    And there was not a single soul anywhere near her, the whole city felt deserted. Chunks of rubble sprawled everywhere, burnt out windows and collapsed roofs, even massive pieces of concrete spread all around, having been ripped out of their foundations with incomparable violence. She approached one such piece, put her palms on it and pushed with all her strength. It didn’t budge even for a hair’s length.

    “This was me…” she said, backing away from it.

    She moved again, out of the wholly destroyed district and into one that was just half collapsed, towards the hotel, or what was left of it. Along the way, she stopped for a moment, looked around her again and took in all the destruction in more detail.

    “This was me.” She said again, pulling her hands out of the coat and looking at them as she clenched and unclenched them, noting the difference between yesterday and now. “I did all of this.”

    She knew that somehow, this was just the beginning. That she would see a scene like the one she was seeing at that moment many times more in the future. In the space of a single night, she had finally lost everything, and gained all at the same time.

    Tucking her hands back into the coat, she tried to guess how she must have looked like from the ground for a moment. Somewhere deep inside of her, she felt a pleasant, warm rush of something she didn’t understand as she imagined her own frame on top of the city with vivid clarity, and thought,

    What now?

    “Tell me, Matthew.” Maia said, sitting back down. “You take this average girl, give her some rough treatment at first, make her suffer and humiliate her. Then you take all she cares about from her. And lastly, you give her incomparable power in relation to the rest of mankind.

    “What is she supposed to think?”

    Matthew didn’t know what to say. He could usually respond in some way to anything, he even remained composed the first time he saw her. But his mind wouldn’t conjure any meaning out of what she had told him in the past half hour. It was a scenario hadn’t thought about even after being trapped in this place all this time.

    “It wasn’t a rhetorical question.”

    “I know, I know!” He broke out his stillness. “It’s just… I don’t know! You tell me!”

    She smiled. “That is not why I’m keeping you alive.”

    Keeping me alive. Her words hurt a little more than he thought they would. He sighed. “How can I know? I can barely believe the things that I’ve seen in this place, the things that I’ve seen you do. I don’t think I can ever understand how the girl that you’re telling about, whether she had those powers or not, could turn into a-” He stopped, sighing again.

    “A monster?”

    “No.” He said immediately. “Monster is… too simple. You are far more than that, possessing a certain quality that I cannot discern. Yet. Monster implies a certain wildness and ugliness to it, something abnormal. You are anything but. Your actions are precise, your demeanor is controlled, the way you carry yourself and treat your… toys, I’ve actually seen many of them thinking they deserved what you did to them. Those are not the actions of a monster; they make you-” He stopped again, looking her in the eyes with concern.

    Her smile grew broader. “Very flattering of you.” She said. “But they make me what?”

    He remained silent for a moment, still looking her in the eyes, eyes that had cornered him. He smiled. “I know what you’re trying to do.” He said. He then shifted his gaze down, tracing her beautiful body from head to toe with it. It was impossible to grasp the enormity of her abilities from where he was standing, it seemed like it had become just a story for him, shifted out of the logical part of his mind. Perhaps it was because her powers were anything but natural, but maybe that was the point.

    “Fine.” He said. “You wanted to know what a girl like that is supposed to think. A deity. A god. Or rather a goddess, in your case. That’s the conclusion she would eventually come to.”

    She let out chuckle, and then looked back at the fire, drawing in a deep breath. “Yes, a goddess, something like that. It took some time for me though. I wandered the deserted streets of the city for a couple of days, barely managing to find food and water to keep me going. I went to the hotel at first, but there was only rubble left for hundreds of yards around it.

    “Then, soldiers came. But not darkhairs, resistance fighters. Rumor had spread fast. But they found a weak little girl amongst many other survivors instead, almost shot me because I was wearing one of their officer uniforms, then took me with them.

    “The darkhairs’ armies had retreated in the confusion of that night, but then became poised to retake Karai, attributing the destruction to an unexplained natural event, of course. The resistance fighters decided the city was a lost cause, so they retreated and took along as many of civilians as they could, fleeing towards the mountains in the north.

    “Thus, I found myself living the winter through in the open, sleeping in the cold, still trying to understand what had happened that night.”

    ---

    “Here’s your soup.” Kris said, holding the bowl in front of Maia. “You better drink it while it’s warm.”

    Maia gave the resistance commander a weak smile, and took the bowl, nodding in acceptance. She shifted on her back, leaning straighter against the wall of a ruined house. The whole group was resting on an abandoned town north of the capital, trying to figure out a way to get to the mountains without being spotted.

    “Thank you.” Maia said, and proceeded to drink the soup.

    Kris regarded her for a moment, and then sat down beside her. He was a young man, in his early twenties Maia guessed. Handsome too, and she could see that he had a seen a lot in the past few months, which is perhaps why he took a special interest in Maia, he could see something more than a tame girl in her. She hated and welcomed it at the same time.

    “What’s your story, Maia?” He asked her. He had been asking the same question many times in the past weeks, and Maia always replied the same way.

    “I lost my family in Karai, and then you found me.” It had become like a blinking contest between the two. Who would lose patience first?

    He sighed. “What really happened that night?”

    I grew hundreds of feet tall, became a monster, killed countless people and destroyed much of the city. “I don’t know. I hid until it was all over.”

    “Do you believe the stories?”

    Maia remained silent. She did not know what to believe. It had been her that did all of that, yet it felt like it was only her mind that had conjured the images to cope with all that had happened to her. Like a wild, relentless dream she couldn’t wake up from.

    “You know,“ Kris said,“ you need to cheer up a bit. It won’t help you staying this-”

    A sudden blast came from one of the nearby houses, throwing pieces of shattered concrete all around. Maia let go of the bowl and put her arms around her head in instinct, as did Kris, but he quickly got up and shouted for his second in command.

    “Tanks!” The reply came. “I can see a battalion coming our way!”

    “Everyone!” Kris shouted. “Line up the houses! Prepare!”

    Then he looked at Maia. “Seems like our game will have to come to an end here.” He looked disappointed.

    “Give me a rifle.” Maia said. “I can fight.”

    “What? No.”

    Maia stood up. “You have the weapons, but don’t have the men. Give me a rifle.”

    Kris considered for a moment as gunfire started to come from both sides. “Maia, you’re still just a girl!”

    “What’s there to lose?” She said. “I’ve seen enough in this war. Give me a rifle.”

    He looked at her for a few more moments. “Fine. Come with me.”

    A few minutes later, Maia found herself with a rifle, lined against a wall on one of the outer houses, mostly pinned down against a barrage of gunfire that came from the battalion of darkhairs.

    They had superior training and equipment, including armored vehicles with which they’d routed all armies of Maia’s nation. On the other hand, the resistance fighters were largely composed of frightened young men, mostly farmers. They had mounted a little fight over the last months, but now it would be all over.

    Maia though remained calm. She did not care what was going to happen to her, she had been through enough.

    “You’re quite brave for a girl.” Kris said after he took a shot from a hole on the wall.

    “I don’t think it is bravery that you’re seeing.” She said.

    “So, what’s your story then?”

    She smiled. Another high explosive grenade by one of the advancing tanks blasted one of the nearby houses off, and they both ducked for cover.

    “So, this is it.” Maia said. “It’ll all end here for us.”

    “Well, at least we die fighting.”

    In a sudden, something stirred within Maia. She didn’t understand why, but the implication that she would die today woke it up. She wasn’t ready to die. She was going through a journey, one that she needed to see the end of, and dying was not part of it.

    The thing then burst out, shooting through all her veins and nerve ends. It was the same feeling, the same power. Somehow, the prospect of death awakened it, and Maia realized it had always done so in the past, the ultimate trigger which had been her falling from the hotel in Karai.

    It was back, and it felt like she had always known how to control it.

    She threw the rifle on the ground. A petty tool compared to the power she felt flowing within her. The other fighters saw it, their anger growing at her apparent cowardice, and Kris looked disappointed, but Maia smiled.

    Next, she stood up, and began undressing herself.

    The redheaded soldiers watched with mouth-gaping astonishment as Maia shed her coat first, then her makeshift jacket and trousers, and finally her boots, standing stark naked in the chilling cold, prompting an eerie silence within the battered buildings of the town.

    “What the hell are you doing?” Kris said with a subdued shout. “Have you gone mad?”

    She looked at him. “I don’t want to shred my clothes. I’ll want them when I get back.”

    Kris frowned, his gaze shifting up and down Maia’s body. He clearly didn’t know what to say. It didn’t matter to Maia, they would all understand in a minute. She drew in a deep breath, then moved out of the cover of her tree, and slowly stepped out of the buildings, walking towards the battalion of darkhairs.

    Their faces were too far to make out properly, but she could see their surprise. Surprise and lust, of course. What would a simple soldier think of her anyway? That she’s a whore, that she wants to use her body to survive. She wouldn’t fault them for thinking that way, nor would she be surprised if one of her own kind decided to shoot her in the back. But somehow, she knew innately she shouldn’t fear something like that from both sides. She was more than a mere mortal.

    Where are those thoughts coming from? 

    She felt the power grow stronger, demanding to be let out. The chill of the wind disappeared, and each step in the snow melted it around her feet. Her stride and posture were confident, her hair fluttered like a symbol. She stopped about fifty feet outside of the town, feeling guns pointed at her both from darkhairs and redheads alike.

    She took a look around for a moment, and then closed her eyes. It was time.

    “Release.”

    If there was an analogy to what it felt like, it was that of the power within herself shaped in the form of a smith hammering against her body again and again, shattering it each time and then reforming it in the blink of an eye, continuously forging a little larger version of her body. She could feel each part of her it, from her fingertips to her toes, being violently broken up, and then sewn back together, but a little bigger. And it was incomprehensibly painful. She did not know how one could withstand such pain and remain conscious, but when it was over, the pain vanished in an instant.

    Maia opened her eyes, looking at the blue sky above. She could feel the difference, just like the first time. She felt heavy, but still possessed the strength to remain standing. And this time, knowing what was coming, euphoria engulfed her.

    She looked down, spotting a billowing cloud of dust- no, snow, around her. It dissipated quickly, revealing the astonished gazes of the darkhaired soldiers at her feet. They were insignificantly small compared to her, mere insects that could not hurt her however they might try. Even their fearsome armored vehicles looked petty, like small toys.

    Eveyrone was frozen on their spot, even the Kris and his resistance fighters when she looked around. Maia figured she was a sight one never dreamt of to behold, so none of them knew how one should react, or think. She decided to break their spell.

    Remembering the eerie way her body worked at this scale, she adjusted for it by slowly raising one foot, hovering it above one of the armored vehicles they called tanks, and simply let it fall on top of it.

    The piece of metal could not contain the weight and buckled in on itself, then exploded on all sides, spreading gushing warmth beneath Maia’s foot, too harmless for her. She smiled broadly at the effect, and the wave of panic that spread on the darkhairs. Some shot at her ineffectively, most simply ran. They were pitifully slow.

    Her smile faded at the sight. It reminded her of the horrors she had witnessed while being Syl’s pet. The way they had killed her kind so casually, as if they were cattle. They had to pay.

    She raised her other foot, and this time aimed for a dense spot of fleeing darkhairs, planting it with careful deliberation on top of them. They stopped, stumbling into the icy ground as the shadow of Maia’s foot engulfed them, raising their hands in panic. Their bodies withstood the pressure for a split of a second before she felt them burst, splattering blood around her foot, dying the snow with its crimson color.

    It was so easy.

    Maia stood motionless for a few moments, looking at the flowing red blood. She had just killed with intent. It was no accident, she was not mad, lost or thought it all a dream. No, she knew precisely what she was doing, and she felt indifferent about ending their lives so casually. Why? Was she no different than them? No, somehow she felt the reason was deeper than that.

    She felt a peculiar sting on her thigh, which caused her to look away from the blood towards its source. Along some soldiers, one of the armored vehicles took a shot at her. Still too harmless, but it infuriated her for some reason. She took a step towards it and grabbed it, a little surprised that it weighed more than she expected.

    She turned it around, and its turret fell off along with three people that stumbled out of it and into their deaths far below. She felt the tracks of the hull move though; there were still some inside. She clenched her hand, and ground the can of metal in on itself. She was amazed at how much force she managed to produce with her hand, twisting the metal and crushing the hull easily, causing it to burst in flames.

    Then, someone appeared out of the hole where the turret should have been, flailing wildly due to the flames burning on his clothes. Maia watched as he managed to squeeze out of the confines of the crushed hull and crawl in panic, trying to put out the flames with his hand. He did not apparently know where he was since he slipped from the hull and fell from Maia’s hand, bouncing on one of her breasts before he cruised to the ground like a streaking comet, bursting in red when he it.

    Maia let go of the hull, and cupped her breast with one hand. So damn easy!

    She then saw dots of red moving on the ground and around her. Resistance fighters. They had come out of the town, pursuing the fleeing darkhairs after Maia had practically routed all of them in a few steps. She smiled, feeling a little proud too. There still were a lot of darkhairs alive, running towards the distant ridgeline of the forest, so Maia decided to make it easy for the resistance fighters.

    She took a few steps towards them, then leapt and smashed her foot on the ground, shattering it in the immediate vicinity and causing it to quake for several hundred yards, throwing everyone off their feet.

    She put her hands on her hips, admiring her work as the resistance fighters closed in. She was unstoppable, and she laughed, laughed for the first time in months.

    But then it faded when the redheads reached the fleeing darkhairs, and proceeded to massacre them without remorse. Maia watched as all around her, victims became perpetrators, the roles reversed, and there was absolutely no difference. Her kind was just the same, only circumstances differed.

    She should have felt joy at that moment, proud that she represented hope for her kind, but instead it all drained away and was replaced with a feeling that surprised her: disdain. She suddenly resented everyone at her feet. Why was she becoming arrogant all of a sudden?

    She shook her thoughts off, and scanned the ground, searching for a particular uniform. She spotted the darkhaired officer somewhere in the midsts of the chaos, captured by three redheads and forced on his knees, a rifle on his head. Maia took a step and then crouched down, brushing the redheads away from him with a casual move of her hand, and then picked up the officer, standing back up.

    When he regained his bearings, his face was that of pure terror, and reverence. “Listen to me, carefully.” Maia said in his language. “Tell the Sovereign to arrange a meeting, least you want all your cities burning. Understood?”

    The officer nodded rapidly through his shaking form. Maia then walked to the ridgeline of the forest, and lowered the officer on the ground. “Go.”

    After watching the officer run through the forest for a few seconds, Maia turned around and watched the battlefield. All the violence, all the terror and anguish that men caused to each other, and all the tools they devised just to kill each other, it looked all so petty, insignificant from her vantage point.

    She lowered her head and held her arms in front of it, clenching and unclenching her fists, trying to understand the state of mind that she found herself in, but only did so where she saw a single, indiscernible bird fly just in front of her face.

    She waved a hand close to the bird and watched as it struggled to maintain itself through the gushing winds she generated. All her life, she had been just a mote of dust suspended on the wind, unimportant, destined to be used for the purposes and benefits of other people.

    But now, she was the wind.

Maia stared at her gloved hands, feeling the power she wielded. So abstract, yet so real.

    It was there, under her control. She could summon it now, whenever she wanted to. It was no illusion or dream. No figment of her imagination. And she now understood that it had been always there, hidden in the background of noises within her mind. Like a numb limb that had its blood flow restored.

    But it was her emotional state that she found strange. She felt calm, unwavering. There was no fear within her anymore. No worry, no burden of responsibility. She felt free, unshackled from all the pain and grief that she’d experienced in the past few months.

    Even beyond that, she felt so much more than that unimportant speck that she had been her entire life. She had the attention of the world now, and she had the power to shape it. She was no mere human anymore. It had changed her completely.

    But she also had so many questions. She needed to find the golden-haired woman, somehow knowing that she was alive despite what had happened to the capital. But she didn’t know how she’d be able to find her.

    She was in no hurry though.

    Freeing her senses to her surroundings, she looked up at the crowd that surrounded her in the middle of the town’s square, listening to the noise they generated. Kris’s soldiers protected her from the press as she picked individual shouts and cries.

    Goddess! Some of them screamed. Heavensent! Angel! Protector! Other cited scripture, and many remained silent, watching her with utter amazement and reverence.

    “Shut up everyone!” Kris screamed, trying to calm the crowd. But it was futile.

    Maia smiled. They had witnessed a divine act. Nobody would be able to remain calm at that. She had towered several hundred feet above them, dwarfing them completely. She had commanded the body of a deity, and they were rightly excited about it, even though it was for the wrong reasons.

    Her thoughts surprised her, how easily she thought to be above them.

    Kris still screamed, and his soldiers pushed against the crowd, but there was no subduing it, they were too restless. Maia tucked her arms within the pockets of her officer coat that Kris’s soldiers had kept for her. There was only one way to silence the crowd.

    She summoned her power, but not to grow. She understood that there was a phase before she did that, like unsheathing a sword before striking with it. It changed the air around her, made her hair flutter a little. There was a distinct feeling of something profound reverberating all around her, something that would cause goose bumps on each and everyone surrounding her.

    They all became silent in an instant.

    Her smile grew. She truly was a goddess. The silence reigned for a few moments as she withdrew her power, then people started to kneel down. Maia blushed at that. And she liked it too.

    “Maia, “ Kris said. She turned her head, but he seemed to not know what to say to her.

    “Yes?”

    He looked at her a few more moments, then spoke, “Who are you?”

    Good question. She drew in a deep breath. “I don’t know.”

    “How can you not know?”

    “I don’t know that either.”

    Someone from the crowd shouted, “You are our savior! You are here to avenge us!”

    “No.” Maia said softly, but everyone seemed to hear it. “I don’t owe you anything.”

    Her words seemed to freeze everyone cold. She knew those were not the words they expected. But that’s how she felt. There was a bigger purpose to her, she knew, and it was not to become a weapon in a pathetic war. Savior? Angel? Protector? It seemed so silly to her.

    “What do you mean?” Kris said. “Of course you don’t owe us anything, but-”

    “What?” She turned at him. “You are going to rally behind me? You want me to destroy them? You expect me to save you because my hair is red? I’m not the answer to your prayers.”

    “But-”

    “There’s no but. There is no difference between you and them but some pigment on your hair. On the other hand, there is a difference between you and me.”

    Complete silence reigned after her words. Events beyond everyone’s imagination had played out right in front of them, yet they turned to be anything but what they expected. Maia could see the growing fear in their eyes. It made her feel great.

    “Maia,” Kris looked at her, his face turning into utter disappointment. “You’ve been with us for so long. We found you on the streets for heaven’s sake! You ate with us, drank with us, slept with us. Why did you hide your nature for so long? Why are you being so cold? Are you playing with us?”

    Yes. Why was she doing this? It made no sense to her. This wasn’t her. But there was no denying it. Within herself, her emotions played out entirely different to what she expected. Everything had changed for her, she simply didn’t care about Kris and all the others anymore. She couldn’t bother to listen to them anymore. What was happening to her?

    Kris put a hand on her shoulder. She drew her power, causing everyone to flinch backwards. The other soldiers hoisted their guns, pointing at her. Somehow, she knew she wouldn’t need to care about it either. They were harmless to her. She then raised her hand and pushed Kris’ hand from her shoulder, looking at him.

    “I’m sorry.” She said. She needed to get out of here. She still felt enough compassion for the people around her, but she feared she might do something unforgivable. She was still human enough to understand that. “I’m going away. I… I’m going to reshape this world, for better or worse. Maybe one day I’ll come back for you. But I need time. I’m sorry. There are too many things that I need to understand first.”

    She then walked away with everyone staring at her, crushing disappointment in each of their eyes. Maia had to hold herself back. It felt like they were disrespecting her, like they expected something from her when in fact she felt compelled to crush everyone beneath her feet.

    What’s happening to me?

    ---

    “That’s a drastic change.” Matthew said.

    “It changes you in ways that are most likely unfathomable to you.” Maia said. “But I think you still do understand.”

    “Well, from how I know you, I’m not surprised by your behavior there, but you changed too fast. Might it be that this power of yours corrupts you somehow?”

    She smiled. “You tell me.”

    Matthew laughed. “Fine. You said it’s unfathomable for me. Then tell me, do you think it was a real change or do you feel that possessing this power of yours surfaced emotions and feelings that were always suppressed because of your status?” He cleared his throat. “Did you become who you are now, or did were you always meant to be like this?”

    “That’s an interesting question.” She eyed him for a few moments, then turned her head towards the fire, thoughtful. “I don’t know, not for sure. I feel that I’ve always been this… goddess. It may be a little bit of both, but deep down inside, I think- no, I knowthat I’ve been born into this vessel without any way of knowing who or what I truly was, and that I’d have had to discover my potential. And I think that… I’m special, so to say. On a level that ordinary people cannot understand. I’m more than them, than you, not in just the ways that are visible, tangible. The proverbial light behind my eyes is different, more powerful than that of ordinary people.”

    Matthew remained silent for a moment, and then snorted. She turned and eyed him, their seriousness like an order to explain himself to her.

    “You want me to be honest.” He said. “I’ll be honest. That’s rich, and arrogant.”

    She raised an eyebrow. “Arrogance implies an exaggeration of one’s importance or abilities. I’m not exaggerating.”

    She was right, Matthew realized. But still, “Come on. You think your… soul, is different?”

    “Yes.” She said. “I think you’ll understand better when I get to finish my story.”

    “Uhm, ok. I too think it would be best if you continued.” He shifted from his sitting position a little bit to face her better. “So you walked away. Where to?”

    “Well, I strode aimlessly for a while, thinking. I knew that The Sovereign would never accept meeting me, and I wanted to meet him so I could find the blonde woman. I needed answers. Then I realized that he didn’t want to meet this giant woman, not me. He didn’t know the giantess was me. I didn’t know what happened to Syl at that time, but I was sure he would’ve wanted to listen to me.”

    “Ah.” Matthew understood. “Let me guess, you let yourself get captured.”

    She smiled once again.

    ---

    Maia woke to the sound of metal grinding against metal. She felt the forward motion that came with the stopping of the train as it was breaking, adjusting for it on the wooden platform where she sat, imprisoned. Her arms and legs itched on the spots where she was bound, fighting the urge to grow out of them.

    For two days she had been traveling as a prisoner on the train. At first, her captors, a reconnaissance unit, wanted to kill her on the spot. She had needed a lot of convincing to do before they agreed to check her story out. Knowing their language had helped a lot. She wasn’t sure she’d be meeting him afterwards, but she wanted to try a more subtle approach first rather than scare him into permanent hiding.

    Maia heard the footsteps of people approaching, the usual guards that would give her some food and let her outside her wooden prison inside one of the train’s wagons. But then she noticed the missing background noise. They usually stopped at stations with an array of sounds and chatter all around the train, but she was sure they must have stopped in the middle of nowhere. The only thing she could hear was a fizzle of raindrops on the roof of the wagon.

    Then, light flooded the inside of the wagon as they opened the door. Two of them stepped inside and released her from her cage, dragging her outside. She stepped on the muddy ground and her thoughts were confirmed when she regarded the area around them, a vast clearing surrounded by a forest, with no trace of a city or village nearby. She was going to meet him, for sure.

    It wasn’t long before The Sovereign’s car arrived. An elegant machine surrounded by heavier pieces of armored ones that escorted it. He felt safe, she thought, and a wicked smile formed on her face that she had trouble suppressing.

    The car stopped in front of them. A guard moved and opened the car’s rear door and readied an umbrella. The one-armed man stepped outside a moment later. Maia had met him on several occasions, and his imposing figure in military uniform never failed to impress her. But this time, she felt no anxiety, no fear at all.

    She had witnessed a similar scene many times with Syl. A bunch of arrogant men in their imposing military uniforms with rifles and all that came with it, surrounding redheads, humiliating them, torturing them and murdering them. Maia felt a wave of euphoria rush through her veins as The Sovereign approached her, knowing that him and all these men were already dead at the hands of this meekly, dirt-covered, unsuspecting little girl.

    “It’s really you.” The Sovereign said with his usual flat tone as he stopped right in front of her, a hint of shock forming on his expression. “Where is my daughter? Where is my heir!”

    Heir? Maia didn’t know that. Never thought about it actually. “Dead, I think.”

    She could see the anger on his face immediately, then felt the burning sensation on her cheek as she slapped him. “You dare speak to me like that?”

    She turned her face, slowly, back towards his, smiling all the way. “What do you think happened back there, Sovereign?”

    He frowned, but said nothing. She could see his thoughts mirrored in his face plain as day. First it was confusion, followed by understanding, then realization, and finally, full-blown shock. “Kill her. Now!” He screamed.

    Maia gave them no chance. She exploded instantly.

    Her first thought afterwards was the haze of raindrops that surrounded her. It was like a never-ending, wet blanket of fog to her. When she moved her arms, they carried the drops with them on river-like streams along her skin, leaving huge gaps of empty space trailing them and swirling the rain all around them. The physics at play never ceased to amaze her.

    She looked down at her feet with a growing smile.

    She confirmed what she suspected for a while. She literally grew. Although it was difficult for her to sense it in the process, she knew she didn’t just pop in her gigantic form, but her body gained mass and pushed everything aside in her vicinity.

    The men were sprawled on the ground all around her feet, startled. Her heels had pushed a few of the train’s wagons out of their tracks. And the soft ground had yielded a few feet to her weight. But The Sovereign looked well. He had stood right in front of her before, and consequently found himself right between her feet afterwards. He must have jerked backwards and fallen in surprise, since he was looking at her with such terror in his expression that convinced Maia that the past two days had been entirely worth it.

    She crouched down, and everyone started moving, screaming, and fleeing. The Sovereign crawled backwards, which amused her before she picked him up with uttermost care. She didn’t want to accidentally break him, remembering how fragile their bodies were on her scale.

    She slowly lifted him up and placed his terrified form on the palm of her hand, smiling down at him. “Hi!”

    “Y- You can’t be real!” He screamed.

    She lowered her hand abruptly, a dozen feet to his perspective. His body followed it shortly after, causing him to slam against her skin, face-first. “Real enough?”

    “Who are you?” He said after regaining his bearings.

    “Good question.” Her voice seemed to shake his entire body. Indeed, it was a good question, one for which she had sought him for. She didn’t know, and she wanted answers. “But first,” she said as her fingers closed all around him, “I have to take care of the little pests at my feet.”

    Most were already running away, their speed too feeble for her. She first concentrated on the vehicles that tried to get away. She put a foot above one of them and applied some pressure, breaking its caroserie in several places and destroying its drive wheel. She wanted those inside alive.

    Two remaining ones she nudged on their sides, sending them flying sideways, rolling around, sprawling some of their living contents out. It caused her to giggle as she moved her attention to those fleeing on foot. Moving her other foot, she hovered it upon a dense spot, inadvertently shielding them from the rain. Maia enjoyed the terror she induced when they turned to see the massive, mud-covered sole looming above them. The power over life and death she possessed thrilled her to no end. She still didn’t know why, deciding that particular quest for understanding to be something for the future.

    She planted her foot down on top of them, carefully. The rain-soaked ground allowed her more leeway with the pressure she applied, shoving their little, wriggling bodies into the mud. That’s where they belonged, she thought. Right beneath her feet, eating wet dirt. She was literally above them. Their lives belonged to her. She could decide to do whatever she wanted with them. And she wanted them dead.

    But not an easy one. Instead of letting her full weight rest on top of them, she dragged her foot on the mud, rolling their bodies along like a master of puppets, having no choice but to obey her whims. She felt little snaps, like stepping on dry leaves, and limbs dragged along in ways that made even her shiver slightly. But at the same time, she enjoyed it too much.

    Then she removed her foot and observed her work. They immediately started crawling, reminiscent of worms forced on the surface after tilling the soil. Maia crouched down to observe them more directly. She wanted to tell herself that she was doing this because that’s what they deserved, because they were darkhaired. But it didn’t feel that way.

    She moved a finger and pressed one of them with it, shoving his face on a pool of muddy water and keeping him like that. She really wanted to believe that she was what the people back in that town called her: a savior, but she knew she wasn’t. Somehow, she knew there was an underlying reason why this was all happening, her and the war included. A reason that outgrew everything that had happened in the history of her entire world. And she knew the golden-haired woman was at the center of it all. But how?That’s what Maia wanted to know. That woman obviously knew what Maia was capable of.

    Sighing, she applied more pressure on the weakening form beneath her finger, breaking the man apart with ease. The others tried to crawl away with renewed vigor. She observed them a little more, her hand meanwhile straying around, causing hurricane-like winds that swept all the other fleeing ones along. She also needed to understand why she was feeling this warmth that swept all along her body, especially between her legs. Why did killing these bugs feel so wonderful?

    Sighing once more, she rose up again and put the rest out of their misery with a stomp.

    Her focus then shifted to the others. She concentrated on the injured ones coming out of the vehicles, tapping them with her big toe, each tap causing agonizing screams to erupt from them. She thought to ask them how it felt like being played around like toys, but found she couldn’t bother.

    Her games then grew more violent. She kicked a few getting close to the tree line, sending them flying hundreds of yards through the air. Some even broke apart mid air. The others she crushed in various ways. Fast and slow, stomping on some then deliberately smearing others. A couple she popped between her toes, and one had the unfortunate luck of being cut in half by her nail. All the time, Maia wondered why she left no compassion at all for them, even if they were darkhaired. They were humans in the end, and there were always bound to be innocents even between soldiers. But no, not a speck of care within her, only playful lust.

    After some time, she noticed the train beginning to move. She hadn’t seen one of them cutting off the detracked wagons, but she still giggled at their foolishness by attempting to get away on a train. They should have just stayed hidden.

    She grabbed the train with her free hand and slowly lifted it. Remarkably, the links between the wagons held and she could lift it even though it was still heavy. Bits and pieces of whatever the train was transporting began to fall from the wagons. Raw resources, pieces of machinery, humans. She ignored it all. Instead, after lifting it and holding it steady for a few moments, she began to swing it like a pendulum. Only, she increased the force with each swing.

    Then, after having created enough momentum, she swung it all around like playing with a piece of rope. It still held, amazingly. She put even more force on the swing, and the weakest link broke apart on the second rotation while traveling upwards.

    Half a dozen wagons and the front engine of the train rotated wildly in mid air for a few moments before each one twisted and turned sharply against the others, causing the whole line to violently break apart above her, spending bits and pieces of shredded metal flying everywhere. Then the wagons followed, falling on all directions like the aftermath of a firework. With an open mouth, Maia watched her work, loving the level of destruction she could cause with such mundane acts.

    The rest of the train followed in similar fashion as she released it in mid rotation.

    She lingered for a while, watching the death and destruction she had caused in a short amount of time. Afterwards, she crouched down and released her prisoner, perching him atop one of the train’s wrecked wagons where he had a perfect point of view for the carnage that Maia created.

    She watched as The Sovereign regarded his surroundings with complete shock and fear in his face. He turned to look at Maia’s looming form that shadowed him from the rain that was getting heavier.

    Maia pointed a finger at him, a threat. “Where is the golden-haired woman?”

    He said nothing, but the look in his face was plain.

    “You don’t know, do you?”

    The Sovereign gritted his teeth. It was fascinating to see such a powerful man rendered so useless, Maia thought. He didn’t know what to do, didn’t know how to act. He was faced with a goddess, a redhaired one, and she was the end of him. It amused her to see the disbelief in his expression.

    “Just tell me this, “ Maia said. “And I’ll be quick. Why did she help you? How did she do it?”

    He remained silent at first, but Maia could see the gathering thoughts of his mind. Then he finally spoke, “I don’t know why. I only know that she’s omniscient.”

    Maia frowned, but said nothing. She thought for a few moments, then picked him up and rose back up. “Omniscient, huh.” She said, but not really to him or anyone in particular. “It can’t be. Or else, she would have found me immediately. Either way, I’ll find her, eventually. I’ll be hardly inconspicuous now.”

    The she looked at The Sovereign one last time. A man she had thought incapable of fear in the past. His expression screamed terror, and it made her smile. She could see Sylisia’s features in him, the same eyes, the same mouth. It sent a shiver down her spine, remembering the months she spend as her sex slave. It was only fitting that her father would end the same way.

    Lowering him down between her legs, she slid him between the folds of her sex, and pushed his scrambling form against her clitoris with her index finger. She felt the tingling sensation, and shot her head up with eyes wide open.

    Her legs trembled, making it difficult for her to stay balanced. Her breathing got caught at first, then paced as further jolts of never-ending electrical pulses shot from in between her legs like fireworks. She thought she would crush him, unable to hold it back, and moved to push the folds of her outer labia with her thumb and middle finger together, burying him within.

    His struggles grew smothered, controlled. Maia stopped to think about it, to really grasp the meaning of what she was doing. She had buried a full grown man, the most powerful one in the world at that, within her most intimate flesh. She had control over him that Syl could’ve only dreamt of. Her smile grew broad as she moaned, dropping to her knees.

    She concentrated, pinning him further. She felt his every movement, the warmth of the tiny speck, sensed emotions that raged within his mind, the humiliation that she was putting him through. She tried to hold on to her state of mind for a bit longer, but recognized when the time had come. She pushed the folds of her sex forcefully, feeling his little body break in a thousand places.

    In an instant, her orgasm came.

    She dropped forward, falling on the muddy surface, panting. She released her little spent sex slave, uncaring for what had become of him. Her mind delved into a haze, slowly slipping into a dream, unable to fight the urge and tiredness.

    Whens he woke, the rain had stopped, and she was back on her normal size. She rose up immediately, regarding the chaos that surrounded her. It left a much bigger impact when she witnessed it on her normal size.

    Her hand slipped between the nakedness of her thighs, feeling around. She had really done it, but there was no body. Her eyes then wandered further down the field and spotted the remains that she recognized. It was the best feeling she had ever experienced. And she wanted more.

“Bad for business.” The baker said, handing the roll over to Maia. “People are afraid, miss. Talks of The Sovereign missing, entire villages disappearing, people babbling mad things. It’s a rebellion of those red vermin, for sure. Very bad for business.”

    Maia handed over a coin to the baker. “People don’t seem afraid here.”

    “It’s the spring festival.” He said. “The good people of this city are going to celebrate that no matter what.”

    “Do people really think an army of them has made it this far?” Maia took a bite out of the roll, she had loved this particular bakery when she had lived in the capital.

    The baker sighed, then leaned over the counter, almost whispering, “I’ve spoken to some people who’ve… seen things. They shook and stuttered with every word, talking about… a giant monster.” He shook his head. “One of them though seemed less afraid, but even more insane. He said it’s a goddess, a redheaded goddess. An ancient one called upon to avenge their people. And our beloved city is next.”

    He then leaned back, still shaking his head further. “Can you believe that? Like those dogs even deserve something like a goddess. But they sure do know how to make people mad. A tactic, no doubt. Spreading fear. I knew this war would go bad on us. Nothing good ever comes from dealing with them pests.”

    Maia took another bite out of the roll, then took a step towards the counter. She moved her hand, making sure her hat, within which she had tucked her hair, was still firmly in place. Then she eyed the baker and removed her sunglasses, revealing her green eyes.

    “Maybe it’s true.” She winked at him.

    The baker blinked a few times, then his eyes widened, cheeks flushing in anger. “You filthy...“ But something ticked in his mind, and his skin grew pale instead. “You can’t…” he took a few steps back, remaining silent.

    Maia let out a girlish laugh, then turned and walked out into the sun of the spring’s first day. She put her sunglasses on, preferring to not spoil the fun too early. People filled the streets everywhere. The festival was an old tradition of the city, one that would gather all kinds of traders, artists and artisans from all over the nation to showcase their goods and skills on a single day. It was the perfect opportunity.

    Finishing the roll, she headed towards the center of the city, towards the palace. She remained inconspicuous, clad in a black jacket with any mark of her heritage hidden safely away, and mostly ignored by everyone she passed by.

    The cobbled streets and the classical buildings surfaced all kinds of memories. Despite all the hate, the anger and the frustration she had endured while living here, she still had fond memories of certain people who were good to her. But then again, Syl was one of them, and-

    She stopped for a moment, taking a deep breath before she resumed her walk. She enjoyed the leisurely stroll down the city, the peace. It had been a long time since she had seen so much happiness around her, so much joy, even if all of them were darkhaired. She had and still debated her inner conflict all the way to the city.

    Then she arrived at the former embassy, the place she had called home for years. She stood in front of it for a long time, motionless. It had been converted to some kind of ministry, with guards protecting the entrance. But beyond that, beyond all the changes they had made, it was still the place tied with many memories of her family, of her father… and of her sister.

    A couple of tears rolled down her cheek.

    They all deserve what’s coming.

    She turned and walked down the street, heading for the main plaza. All the happiness and joy she saw around her now enraged her. She had seen so much grief, sorrow and death in the span of almost a year, yet those people dared be cheerful, like their lives mattered more. She had the power to show them the consequences of their war. Why shouldn’t she use it?

    Something in the corner of her eye caught her attention. She stopped and turned her head towards one of the alleys leading within the guts of the city. There, through the thick stream of people walking by, she saw a hint of golden hair swept by the wind.

    Her heart skipped a beat, then started fluttering. She rushed towards the afterimage, pressing through the crowds. Had she really seen it? Had that woman, Aria, really been there? She arrived at the spot, with no sight of her. She looked around, but already decided that her imagination had played tricks with her. A woman with that kind of hair would have caused a commotion. She then spotted a scarf of the same color flapping in the wind, worn by a woman moving away from her. Maia sighed.

    She continued walking down the street. The little incident reminded her once again of the true purpose of her visit to this city. No more playing games. No more igniting sparks of rumors here and there. Today, the world would get to know her for real. She did not know any other better way for her to try and get the golden-haired woman’s attention. She needed to know what she really was.

    The wind picked up. She struggled to keep her hat on. Then she stopped, thinking what the point was in holding on to it any longer? So she let it be swept by the wind, revealing her shimmering red hair beneath. She brushed her fingers through it, letting them too be blown by the wind as she strolled down in the midst of a sea of darkhairs, and then took her sunglasses off, tucking them into a pocket.

    At first, the people around looked at her with curiosity in their eyes. It seemed funny to them, like a simple joke. A costume. What redhead would dare to walk so freely in the middle of the capital like that anyway? Maia enjoyed the shifting expressions as they gradually realized she was not playing a redhead, she was a real one.

    That’s when the masses of people started to part, gasps and murmurs filling the air around her. Nobody knew what to do or how to act. A redhead strolling bluntly in their midst like that was too unexpected, like a naked person running around. Nobody wanted to be the one to deal with that.

    But Maia understood group mentality. It wouldn’t be too long before someone broke the ice. And it started to become apparent when she entered the main plaza, and the crowds resisted parting, instead forming a circle around her. She became surrounded by people looking at her with curiosity, disgust or downright hatred.

    She stopped too, standing still in their midst. A few young men walked closer, started circling around her, inspecting her from top to bottom, the hunger in their eyes very much apparent. Maia remained calm, without a hint of any kind of emotion in her.

    “Watcha doin’ here, all lone, ya filthy rat?” One of them said, rolling a small twig on his mouth as he regarded her.

    “Yeah!” One of the others said. “Ya have a death wish?”

    Maia paid them no heed. A few shouts were heard from behind, and moments later two guardsmen broke out from the crowd and approached her, along with an officer behind them. A small flutter of fury flickered inside Maia at the sight of the uniforms, bringing back unpleasant memories yet again.

    “Cuff her.” The officer ordered.

    “Public execution!” Someone from the crowd screamed, drawing in a wave of approving sounds.

    The guards surrounded Maia, grabbing her by both arms. Maia let them. They were about to put the metal braces when someone from the crowd broke out.

    “Wait!” It was an old lady, one Maia did not recognize. But she clearly recognized Maia. Maia frowned at first, then understood when she saw the old lady’s face. A face filled with shock and disbelief. She neared closer and closer, then held up a shaking index finger at Maia. “It- it’s her! Tha- That’s her! She’s the monster! She- she’s the one that wiped out my village! Kill her! Kill her now! Kill her before she kills us all”

    Perfect. Maia thought as a sinister smile formed on her lips. The lady’s words emanated through the crowd like an electric fire. In a sudden, rumours became reality, words you paid no heed to struck at the core of your heart, an otherworldly danger was suddenly right in front you. The crowd grew restless in a single heartbeat, then panic spread.

    They screamed at the guards to kill her then and there, to take no chances. They pushed forward, forcing the guards to leave Maia and pick up their rifles, firing a few warning shots in the air. Maia used the opportunity to take a few steps towards the old lady, standing right in front of her for a few moments and regarding the frightened woman, before she leaned forward and whispered something in her ear.

    When she stood back again, Maia’s mouth grew into a broad smile, and she unsheathed her power. The shouts and struggles around her subdued immediately, and the wind in her vicinity picked up, circling around, pushing outwardly. The old lady stood motionless for a little moment, gasping in shock, then she screamed in terror, running away from Maia.

    It was all the crowd needed, and they too began to back away. She felt two pairs of hands grab her arms once again, but did not care anymore. I suppose it’s time.

    As always, the time between her unleashing her power and the moment she stopped growing was a jumbled mess of confusing sensations and feelings, especially pain. She lost all senses of the outside world in those moments, for when she regained them, she found herself in an entirely different body. The body of a goddess.

    The city spread like a carpet of small, toy-buildings all around her. Unlike the first time, when she destroyed her own home town, here it was broad daylight, and the sight was magnificent. But the most distinctive feature of all were the people, the darkhairs. They were everywhere.

    She looked down, noting the bloodstained ground beneath her feet. Right around them, people were fleeing for their lives in every direction. Further outward, the pace of fleeing masses dissipated until - as she looked far away enough - it ground to a standstill. She could see their faces directed at her, could feel her eyes fixed on her naked body. Hundreds of thousands of them. And she held their utter and complete attention.

    She had never craved for attention in her past, at least never for the reasons girls her age did. She had often daydreamed about changing the world in more than superficial ways, about becoming important through acts of greatness, and kindness.Such naivety, she thought as her eyes wandered back to her immediate vicinity. Her months spent watching downright genocide as she was used as a sex slave taught her the true way the word changes. And now she possessed the most potent world-shaping tool there seemed to be.

    “Let me introduce myself.” She said as she raised a foot and held it up above a random group of horrified fleeing people. “I am your new god now.”

    She let it descent without a shred of mercy in her eyes. Blood splattered all around her foot and into the surrounding survivors as they were blown away by the thunderous impact. The ground tremorred and cobblestones exploded from the ground like projectiles, shooting right through people and flying through the air before they killed or knocked out others hundreds of yards away.

    As simply as that, she had erased dozens out of existence. No guns or explosives needed. No tools with which she carried out her sentence. No artificial means of separation between her and her victims. She did not command, like The Sovereign did, for them to die by the hands of soldiers and armies, to be read as mere numbers on a report. They hadn’t been a statistic.

    No, she decided to take a simple step, and they died as a result. It was as personal as it could get. She felt their collective bodies put the meagerest amount of resistance before they yielded to her own. Their warm remains spread out uniformly against her sole, their blood flowed and mingle with the dirt of the ground.

    Still, she felt no sense of revenge on her act. Drawing in a deep breath and closing her eyes, she expected a feeling of justice being served as she lingered on the moment. But instead, all she felt was a sense of entitlement. It was her right to do as she did. She answered to no one anymore, and every last one of them was at her complete mercy. Today was the day of her coronation, and she intended to show the world what her rule would look like.

    Exhaling with a broad smile, she opened her eyes and searched for the palace which stood a few steps to her side. It looked like a large, elaborate cardboard model, not unlike the one that resided within its main hall, modeling the very same place. She knew, of course. She knew the building inside out, it’s rows upon rows of corridors and rooms built in the style of the late kingdoms, and it’s extensive gardens that looked like nothing more than grass to her now. Syl had shown it all to her.

    Taking the few steps towards it without a care of where her feet landed, she smashed her foot through the palace’s front entrance. All the pieces of wood, stone and concrete that made up the structure yielded and disintegrated on the spot, blown away by the sheer force of her kick, leaving only a gaping hole and trailing smoke in its wake. She saw the splatters and stains of blood along the broken walls, and the shocked faces of the survivors on both sides of the parts that still stood.

    She laughed. They were the ones that deserved her wrath the most. But she forgot about them for a moment and focused on her next step, aiming for the part of the palace where Syl’s room was. The place where it all began for Maia.

    She outright stomped on it, generating a colossal shockwave that shattered and crumbled half the palace at the same time. She could see it in real-time, shattering every window as it traveled outwardly from the impact area. It felt wonderful to possess such power and to be able to wield it so deliberately, to be able to witness the tremendous consequences of her simple actions with such vivid detail, unlike back in her city.

    She proceeded to stomp the rest of the palace and everyone in it into the ground. It served as the symbol of power for this nation, and she wanted to show just how easily she could eradicate anyone standing her way.

    Afterwards, after she had spent all the anger built inside of her into the palace and particularly its inhabitants, she finally felt free, unshackled from all the infuriating emotions this city triggered on her. Now, playfulness took over.

    She looked around, regarding the masses that fled through the streets and alleys with pathetic pace, struggling and pressing against each other with primal panic. The whole city was her playground now, and she could do with them however she pleased.

    She started walking in a random direction. There was no care in her steps, dozens died with each one, reduced to smears that did not even deserve her attention. Her steps landed unmindfully, sometimes half her foot smashing into a centuries-old building while the other half reduced anyone caught beneath to a bloody pulp. She strolled like that for a while, all around the city, watching how her toys reacted to her steps and her imposing form while the city itself trembled in her wake.

    At a particular street, her foot crashed through a row of buildings and blocked one side with the obliterated remains. The street itself was packed with terrified people and she stopped for a moment, regarding them, before she took another step and destroyed the opposite end of the road, trapping hundreds between her towering legs.

    She stood right above them, dwarfing and dominating them completely. Then she saw drops of some liquid smashing into the crowd, splattering against many and injuring them. She frowned, moving a hand between her thighs and feeling the thoroughly soaked lips of her sex. That’s when she became aware of how incredible sexual charge.

    She pulled her hand and looked at her cum-soaked fingers, felt the warm rush of blood that coursed through her veins, and became conscious of the thoughts that ran through her mind, the things she wanted to do to the people beneath her.

    She dropped to her knees, straddling them her thighs, encompassing their whole world and looked at them. She watched the mesmerizing terror painted in their faces, wondered how she looked from their perspective, what they thought this redheaded goddess was. She ran her sticky fingers through the crowd, scenting them with her secretions.

    Yet again, she wondered what was happening to her. Those people weren’t soldiers. They hadn’t witnessed the horrors of the war. When did she become this thing that would kill them without a second thought? Most of them were innocent, taught into hating her kind out of simple imitation. Why did she feel this crushing need to fuck them?

    She lowered her nether on them, felt their struggling forms beat against her skin and especially the folds of her sex. She arched her head back as her breath got caught like cold, electric shower running up her torso. Her muscles tensed and her hands and toes clenched. She gasped in delight. No moral inhibitions, no sense that killing them was wrong. No guilt, and no regret. Every emotion that would have normally stopped her from committing the gruesome act that she was doing was missing, only a deep, dark void left behind to be filled by her carnal desires.

    She leaned forward, catching her breath and planting her hands on the ground. Every ounce of her being compelled her to just settle her weight down, grind them into oblivion. Only memories of her past self still stood in the way.

    She lowered her head, letting her hair cascade down and focused on the specks of people pouring from between her thighs, desperately trying to flee through the rubble amongst her fingers. Her eyes wandered through them, picking up the details of her devastation and trauma she induced into them through her lewdness. But then she spotted someone in their midst, standing calmly on the spot, looking up and into Maia’s eyes as her golden hair fluttered in the winds of Maia’s ragged breathing.

    Maia’s eyes shot out wide. “You...”

    She blinked a few times, hardly believing she was seeing the one person she sought the most right then and there. The woman smiled at her, appearing like she was waiting for Maia. Maia leaned back up again, looking at her, contemplating for a moment. She needed answers, so she acted on instinct and cupped her hands around the woman like a protective shell. Aria never showed the least bit of fear, which did not surprise Maia.

    Then she spread her hands around her, obliterating and leveling the whole area with a few sweeps. She stood up, releasing the prisoners trapped beneath her and straddled Aria, and then shrank back down.

    “I’m impressed.” Aria said, clapping her leather-clad hands as Maia regained her senses. “Last time we met, you were just this meek, abused little girl. Now you’re a goddess of destruction. You turned faster than I anticipated.”

    Maia started walking through her little artificial wasteland towards Aria, noting the strange style of clothing she wore. Strange pants made out of blue fabric and a weird trench coat on top. And she could still not get used to her natural appearance. Those blue eyes of hers haunted Maia for some reason. “You knew what would happen?”

    “When you think there is no one that can judge you?” Aria smiled.

    “And is there?” Maia stopped right in front of her, clenching her fists.

    Aria then moved, slowly circling around Maia, watching her with intent. “What do you think?”

    “I think I want answers.”

    “To which questions?”

    “You know which!” Maia took a few steps and grabbed Aria on her coat. “You knew what would happen when you threw me through that window. You knew my sister would do as she did. You started this war. Who are you?”

    There was a twitch on the corner of Aria’s mouth, then Maia felt her grip on her throat, tight like a vice. She released Aria’s coat and grabbed her arm, but it was inhumanly powerful.

    “Yes. We will do this.” She said. “But we will do this my way instead.”

    There was no bulging a single inch of her arm. Maia was desperate, she couldn’t say anything, and she wanted answers, but there seemed to be no other way.

    “Yes. That’s right.” Aria said, smiling as always. “Use your power.”

    And she did.

    ---

    Maia remained silent for a few moments, then started laughing. “Oh, I was so naive. So stupid.”

    “Huh?” Matthew frowned. “It seems to me like she gave you no choice.”

    “Oh, indeed. That was the case. But still, in the heat of the moment, even while she held me by my throat, I felt no fear. I was confident, utterly trusting in my abilities. I was so naive. I should have known better.”

    “Why? What happened?”

    She looked at Matthew. “I grew again, of course. But when I looked down, she was missing. I thought I had crushed her while I was in the process. But I could not find any sign of that. That’s when this shadow engulfed me.”

    “Shado-... wait.” Matthew felt genuinely surprised. “Even bigger?”

    Maia laughed again. Then she turned and faced him. “You know, my world never unlocked the secrets of the atom. Only later did I learn about this point in human evolution when they discover nuclear weapons, and the destructive power those things posses.”

    “Nuclear weapons?” Matthew grew confused. “I don’t understand.”

    She let out another small laugh, but with an ironic hint in it. “You see, when I turned around and saw her, she was to me what I was to the humans at my feet. I had to crane my head up to see her face, to see that arrogant smile of superiority. I finally knew how it felt to be one of them when they looked at me.”

    “But… “ Matthew tried to imagine the scene. “That’s miles!”

    Maia nodded. “She basically straddled the whole city. Then she crouched down, causing all sorts of thundering, exploding sounds as she did. She didn’t say anything, she simply spread her arms. Like this.”

    Maia did the same thing. Then she quickly moved them together, clapping once in front of Matthews face. “Right above me. It was devastating. I was blown away, tumbling around like a leaf in the wind. And the whole city was obliterated by this single shock wave into a shower of dust and debris. My body withstood it, somehow, but every single human being in that city was simply ripped to shreds. She unleashed the power of a nuclear explosion with a single clap.”

    She shook her head. “She had been right. I had acted like there was no one to judge me. And she made me understand there was.”

    Matthew watched as Maia leaned back against the base of the bed and stared into the fire again. He tried to grasp the implications of her words, of what it meant for there to be a being as powerful as that. “Just who the hell is she?”

    “That’s the last part of my story, I guess.” 

Maia woke to a clear blue sky above her.

    In that moment she was lost, her mind blank, unable to latch onto any meaningful thoughts or memories. She leaned up instinctively, holding a hand on her aching head and looked around. A lifeless wasteland of rubble and concrete spread out in front of her. A few cracks of falling debris and faint winds of dust trailing between jutting pieces of half-collapsed buildings were the only sounds to be heard on an otherwise complete desolation of the former bustling capital.

    It all came back in a rush to her. From the carnage that she herself inflicted to the true deity that smote everyone around her with a simple gesture. It was in that moment that she understood how clouded her mind had become after she had gained her power. There must be things behind the way the world worked far bigger that she could have possibly imagined.

    She turned her head, not the least bit surprised to find Aria there. They both stood on a rooftop on one of the still standing structures, half of it having broken off into smithereens. The golden-haired woman sat at the edge, arms and legs crossed, looking deep into the horizon towards a faraway mountain range before she heard Maia and turned to look at her.

    “Ah, awake at last.” She said. She still wore the same clothes, while Maia stood naked in the chill of the wind. The cold still didn’t bother her.

    Maia moved her hand to brush off the threads of hair that danced to the tune of the wind from her face. She did not know what to say to that woman. Or rather, she had way too many questions and didn’t know where to begin, but supposed that Aria already knew that.

    “Please, just be… straightforward.”

    Aria raised her eyebrows. “Oh, I like you already!” Then she pulled her legs, swung around from the edge and stood up, taking a few steps towards Maia. “I assume the first question would revolves around who I am.”

    Maia only nodded.

    Aria smiled. “Naturally, as it always is.”

    “Always?” There was a certain implication in her words.

    “Yes.” Once again, she started circling around Maia, like a walz designed to intimidate. “But never mind that, you will understand in time. As to who I am, I think the simplest way for you to understand would be this: I am the architect, sort of.”

    “The architect? Of what?”

    “All that is relevant. This world, other worlds. Humanity as a whole.”

    “There are other worlds?”

    “More than you might imagine.”

    Maia thought for a moment. “Worlds as in…”

    “Planets.” Aria said, stopping and looking towards the sun between the cracks of her fingers. “Circling around far-away stars. Populated by all kinds of societies. Primitive ones that know of nothing more than sticks and stones. Modern ones with technologies beyond your wildest imagination.”

    She looked back at Maia. “Trillions of souls. And I preside over them all.”

    Maia opened her mouth to say something, but hesitated. She blinked rapidly a few times, her mind racing to make sense of the magnitude of her words. She didn’t know much about the stars, just that they’re incredibly far away. To think that there are other places just like her home? And that she created them all?

    Her eyes shifted towards the sky. “So, you’re god. The god.”

    Aria chuckled. “Not exactly. I only preside over humanity, not the universe itself. In fact, I’m not much more than what you are, except that I do it better. And that’s because I’ve had far more time in this... universe, than you.”

    Maia looked back at her. “Then what am I? What are we?”

    Aria gazed into Maia’s eyes with a frightening intensity, smirking a little. “To them, humans, we are indeed gods. There is absolutely nothing they can do to us. We own them. We can create and we can destroy, we can use them whichever way we please. And trust me,” Her smile broadened greatly as she took a few step towards Maia, “From my vast experience, imagination still seems inexhaustible in that aspect.”

    She then stepped behind Maia, and put her arms around her belly, resting her chin on Maia’s shoulder. Maia stiffened at her embrace, a rush of terrorizing memories of pain and despair flooding her mind. It seemed like she lost her ability to breathe for a moment, but something soothed her mind, like a distant abstract force blowing away all the negative emotions that clouded her mind. Her shallow breathing deepened and she calmed in a few more breaths.

    “But on a broader sense,” Aria continued, as if she hadn’t noticed the little panic attack Maia just experienced, “We are anomalies of this universe of ours. We are those that don’t quite follow the rules. We can’t entirely break them, we only bend them, and sometimes we bend them a lot, but we’re still limited in many ways. So we have to make due with that.”

    “Make due for what?” Maia forced herself out of Aria’s embrace, turning and looking at her, still getting used to her unusual eye and hair colors. Aria expressed the faintest surprise for a moment, then fell back to her usual self. “What do you want from me, Aria?”

    “Ah, right. Good question.” She walked towards the edge of the rooftop and looked at the far away mountain range again. “See, me and you, we might well be gods to humans, but that’s it. We’re also human, and that makes us… well, human gods I suppose. We still have two legs, two arms, two eyes, a heart, a brain. We still feel the same emotions, the same pain, the same fear. We can still love, hate and grieve. Oh and yeah,” She turned back and looked at Maia with a mischievous smile “Sex. Nothing like the kind of sex we experience.”

    Maia ignored her hint. “What’s your point?”

    Aria’s smile faded. “There are other kinds of gods.”

    “Other kinds of… you mean like…”

    “Mhm.” Aria noded. “That’s why we need to stick together.”

    “And what if I don’t want to.”

    “You don’t have a choice.”

    “You’re saying we’re the same. You can’t force me.”

    Aria smiled mischievously once again. “Oh, but I can.”

    She raised her hand, then formed her fingers like a gun, making one of those gestures kids would do while playing soldiers on the streets and alleys. Maia felt a stab of fear, like she had just challenged a bear, and took an instinctive step back. But Aria instead pointed her hand towards that mountain range she was looking at earlier.

    “Pow!” She said, recoiling her hand like she had just shot a bullet in the horizon. Maia frowned, confused at the gesture.

    A split of a second later, she saw a bright streak of light falling from the sky. The next one, the whole mountain range blew up in a fiery inferno that almost blinded Maia if she hadn’t moved to protect her eyes with her hand at the last moment.

    She curled up on the ground like a frightened child until the brightness faded a little. She then looked up, spotting Aria’s silhouette superimposed on the bright flame on the horizon dimming with every moment.

    “What the fuck?”

    A few moments later, the brightness dimmed enough to reveal Aria’s smiling face. “Yes, we’re the same, Maia. But as I’ve said, I’ve been here far longer than you. I’m far better than you, and as you can see, I have much better toys on my disposal than you. And lest you forget,” She spread her arms around, gesturing at the devastation surrounding them.

    Maia stood up again, watching as the fire in the horizon subsided entirely. The mountain range was gone, replaced by a massive, mushroom-like cloud, and the ice-cold fear that engulfed her forced her to clench her fists so hard until her knuckles turned white. First the city, now this. This was Aria’s power-show.

    “Death doesn’t scare me.” Maia said. “I’ve accepted it a long time ago. You can’t use fear to bend me to your will.”

    “Bend you…” Aria laughed. “Ah, child. So naive. But let me ask you this: what is death?”

    Maia frowned once more at her philosophical question. She looked back at the smoke and dust that once were mountains while she pondered the meaning of her words, spotting a bright line of what must be a massive shock wave rushing towards them.

    “I don’t know.” She finally said. “I’m sure some of those trillions of souls you preside over told you a thing or two about what comes after death.”

    “I didn’t ask you what happens after. I asked you what death itself is.”

    “What death itself is?” Maia was even more confused. “What do you mean what death itself is? It’s… the end?”

    “Exactly.” Aria said. “That means, it’s a release from this world, and all that comes with it. And by extension, it means release from pain.”

    “What is your point? Are you trying to impress me with your philosophical babble? It’s not working.”

    Aria ignored her words, she simply walked over to her, “But what if… you can’t die?”

    Maia looked her in the eyes, her confusion still there, but then realization sparked in her mind, and her eyes grew wide. Aria saw that, and smiled broadly. She said nothing though, but held a hand behind her just in time as the shock wave arrived. Everywhere around them, the shockwave blasted the remaining buildings to rubble, inciting massive clouds of dust and debris to billow out in its wake. But at the building they stood on, it seemed like it hit something solid but invisible, sparing them.

    “What if you can break someone over and over again,” Aria continued. “And yet have them survive every time? What if you can inflict hellish pain without having to worry about the subject giving out to it?”

    “The curse of immortality.”

    Aria grinned. “Exactly. And why do you think you’ve been so unafraid when walking around after you found your power? Why do you think you never feared bullets, or some random angry kid stabbing you in the back while you were your normal size? You might have thought it was because you didn’t care, but no, child. You can’t die that easy.”

    “I-” Once again, Maia didn’t know what to say. “I’m immortal?”

    Aria stretched out an arm, and a bright flash of light sparked on her hand, forcing Maia flinch back and squint. She refocused her eyes and saw the sword Aria now held on her hand. She had summoned a sword, just like that. Another one of her inexhaustible powers. Where does it end? And why a sword?

    “No,” Aria said, “You’re not immortal, but you’re damn hard to kill. It takes some pretty special stuff to do so, and not just some plain metal. But despite that, it still hurts.”

    Maia had no time to even react. In the blink of an eye, she found herself pierced with the sword straight through her stomach, the other end of the blade jutting out from her back, clad in her blood. The next moment he felt her whole lower body go numb, and she fell back on the concrete. “What-”

    The following moment, pain came. A sharp, burning sensation beneath her chest, right where Aria’s sword still pierced her as she had let go when Maia fell. She tried to speak out, but could only gasp for air, blackness starting to fall down from the edges of her vision. She then felt blood rushing through throat, blocking her lungs. Everything was happening too fast.

    Aria knelt beside her. “I just severed your aorta, and your spine. Normally, you should die in less than a minute, but if you are what I think you are… well, let’s just say: magic!” Aria then removed the sword from Maia’s torso.

    And it truly was like magic. Everything going wrong with Maia’s body stopped in a heartbeat. Her fear and panic stopped growing, her shaking that she hadn’t been aware of calmed. Then everything started receding, her vision came back, the pain disappeared, she could feel her lower body again.

    In the rush, she leaned up in utter confusion, stopping herself from crying out after she became aware of it too. She touched her skin where the sword had pierced her, nothing. She was fine, she felt fine. Everything was as it should have been, except it felt so… wrong. Her body had no idea what just happened, and it was just as confused as her mind.

    Aria smirked. “At last. I meet another one.”

    Maia looked at her, eyes wide, “What just happened?”

    “What happened is that I’ve shown you why it’s unwise to reject my offer of friendship. You don’t want to end up underneath my feet like they ended up underneath yours, but not being able to die even after I break all your bones to fine dust.”

    Maia shivered at the thought. I can’t die, she looked blankly in the distance. I can’t fucking die. I can’t fucking escape if I want to!

    She stood up, shock still clouding her mind. She walked to the edge of the rooftop, gazing at the sprawling destruction. It was too much to take in. She wasn’t just a monster who could reign chaos and terror unto innocent people, but an unkillable one too. And now this woman, this god-like being, wanted to take her in, to perfect this curse and turn her into who-knows-what. She felt sick.

    A thought then occurred to her. A realization, in fact. Aria was god-like, with unrivaled abilities and powers at her disposal. So, why did she let Kaia, Maia’s sister, die? She turned around and looked at Aria who stood at the other edge of the rooftop now.

    “Could you have saved her?” Maia said, taking a few steps forward. Aria looked straight at her. There was a little twitch on the corner of her lip. It was enough for Maia. She stopped, an ice cold shiver running down her spine. “You… could have saved her?”

    The realization angered her. She took a few more steps forward. “You could have saved her!” She pushed her. Aria made no effort to stop Maia. She fell from the rooftop, several stories down, smiling all the way. Maia watched the entire time.

    Right as her body approached the ground, Maia was blinded by a flash of light. It lasted for less than a blink of the eye, and when she opened her eyes, she only saw a billowing cloud of dust below. Then she felt the winds shift behind her, blowing against her naked body. Maia never turned her head, she wasn’t surprised the least bit.

    “Yes, I could have.” Aria said from behind, her voice calm and steady, as always. “But your sister made her choice. She took control of her own destiny. And she was the key that unlocked what’s inside of you. That’s all I care about.”

    “But,” Maia wanted to say something, to scream at the injustice that she felt inside of her. Yet, she held back. That woman started a war between nations just so she could find her. She understood, and she hated herself for it. “Tell me one thing. Why us? Why was our side the one that had to suffer?”

    “I flipped a coin.”

    Maia felt another stab within her. The fate of millions decided like that. She was…

    “There is no difference between the two.” Aria said, approaching. “Do you know why?”

    “There is!” The frustration mounted in her. She hated being so powerless, again. “There always has been.”

    She felt her right behind. She started shaking, dark feelings resurfacing once again, memories of hopelessness. She jumped when she felt Aria’s arms surround her. But they extended forward, holding the palms of her gloved hands up. There was something in them.

    Maia’s eyes then widened. There were people, on both hands. Small people, shrunken. “How is... “

    “... it possible?” Aria let out a brief laugh. “I think I can forgive you for that. But take a closer look.”

    Maia did, and the difference between both hands was immediately obvious. She held redhairs on one and darkhairs on the other. Half a dozen each. They looked confused and full of terror, gazing with shocked expressions at Maia. “Why?”

    Aria said nothing. Instead, she pulled her hands back and kneaded Maia’s breasts with them. Maia gasped, then put her hands on top of Aria’s. She didn’t pull though, she remained still, concentrating the tiny beating hands and fists that she now felt on her sensitive skin.

    “They may look different on the outside,” Aria said, then kneaded Maia’s breasts with much greater force. Their little bodies gave in immediately, spreading a wet warmthness on Maia’s breasts. She gasped further, shocked. Even her kind was dying on her breasts now.

    “But ultimately, they bleed the same color.” Aria then spread the warmth all around Maia’s chest. Maia looked down, her chest was all covered in their blood, and no trace left of what they had once been.

    And it was true, of course. They all bled the same: a uniform, carmine redness.

    Aria’s hands retreated. She remained silent, letting Maia contemplate the meaning of the gesture on her own while fresh, warm blood dripped from Maia’s breasts. Maia remained silent too, her head bent down, watching the redness coagulate and dry on her bare skin.

    A dozen lives snuffed out like that just to make a simple point. And her own kind too. She should feel angry, disgusted, betrayed. Yet, apart from the initial shock, there was nothing. That in itself made her angry.

    A twitch caught her attention. One of them had in fact survived, a redhead. His little form slid down on the slick surface of her breast, generating some bizarre inhuman noises in the process. Just before he fell down Maia’s breast, he managed to swing an arm and cling to her nipple. His other arm was limp, bent awkwardly, and one of his legs was missing, torn completely apart.

    “Can you heal?” Maia said. “Or are you just a harbinger of chaos.”

    “I could.” Aria said. “I just prefer chaos.”

    Maia raised a hand to her little survivor, and with a powerful flick of her finger, she sent his tiny body flying through the air, splattering it into many tiny pieces in the process.

    “Thought so.” She said quietly to herself.

    “Let me entice you more thing.” Aria said from behind. Maia frowned, turning around in time to see Aria pull something from the pocket of her jacket. It was another shrunk person, a darkhaired woman.

    She placed her just in front of her feet, and as soon as the little thing regained her bearings, she scurried away from Aria. That’s until she noticed there was another giant behind her and turned around, craning her head high up with hope in her expression until she saw Maia bearing down on her.

    Syl’s face sparked a sudden, uncontrollable wave of fury within Maia. She gritted her teeth, clenched her fists until her knuckles turned white, and her blood boiled. Maia called on her power with a strength like never before, and the winds shifted immediately, the whole surrounding area darkening visibly in an instant.

    “You fucking dyke.” Maia said to the frightened little thing at her feet. “This is all your fault. I’ll fucking rip you apart!”

    Then Maia’s power was gone.

    “Whoa there, child.” Aria said, waving a hand. “Take it easy. If you kill her right now, you’ll regret it. Trust me. You’d rather want to keep her around for a long long time. It’s way more fun that way.”

    It was like fighting incredible thirst while a bucket of water was standing right in front of her. Maia desperately wanted to plant her foot on top of the scrawny little girl, to end her life the way it should be. Beneath her sole, smeared against the dirt, spewing her guts and blood for Maia. But the promise of endless torture later on? She fought the urge, hard.

    “Fine.” Maia said through her gritted teeth. “I’ll do what you want. As long as I can keep her around and do whatever I want to her.”

    Aria smiled. “Deal.”

    Maia sighed. She raised a foot and moved it above the curled up ball that was a crying Sylisia. She used her big toe to pry Syl open, then ran it all along her shaking body, shivering herself too. “So, what now?”

    “Well,” Aria turned around and shifted her gaze into the distance, “Now you’ll spend a lifetime in a little place between the stars, learning.”

    ---

    “And so, I ended up here, living happily ever after.” Maia said, smirking at her ironic remark.

    Matthew drew a deep breath, “Phew! That was one hell of a ride.” He stretched his stiff body a bit. “How do you feel now?”

    Maia’s gaze was fixed on the flickering flames of the fireplace. “What do you mean?”

    “I know you didn’t do this for me. You didn’t revisit your past and lingered on it for so long just to tell me your story. You wanted to reconnect to your old self, to remind you of what you’ve once been. I mean, this is a lot to take in for me too, and I have a thousand questions, especially when it comes to this Aria person, but there’s enough time for that later anyway.”

    Maia’s gaze didn’t shift from the flames. “I feel like… I feel like I want to play around with Syl some more.”

    “Uh,” That wasn’t what Matt expected. “Ok. But why?”

    “Just because.” Maia said, stretching herself too. “Eve, call for Syl.”

    “Yes, Maia.” A computerized voice came.

    “So, you’ve been playing with her the way I’ve seen for, what, nine years now?”

    Maia smiled. “And hopefully many more.”

    It took less than a minute before Matthew could practically feel the presence of the tortured soul behind the doors of the room, waiting. He shivered at the thought of being at Maia’s mercy for so long. He wondered how she has survived so far, and more importantly, how she hasn’t killed herself so far.

    Maia sat up, heading for the door. Matthew followed up quickly and grabbed her arm, stopping her. She turned around, looking at Matthew with puzzled expression.

    “Don’t do this, Maia.” Matt pleaded to her. “It’s been so many years. Syl deserves some respite. It’s not all her fault.”

    Maia’s puzzled expression lingered for a few more moments before it was replaced with one of anger, one that frightened Matthew deeply. Then, the pain came, and in that instant, Matthew knew he made a terrible mistake.