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.