Aine watched the scene before her unfold in the relative comfort of her personal demi-plane; she drummed a manicured finger across the arm of her finely crafted throne as she pondered what to do.

Floris had suffered a near intolerable rule at the hands of a Titaness turned sorcerer queen, and as this queen continued, things deteriorated, people were lead by corrupt officials placed in high office by this queen, others still starved in the street, were treated like 2nd class citizens at best, toys and slaves at worst.

"To let such a sin stand would tarnish many things within that kingdom," she murmured as she rested her elbows on her knees, steepled her fingers and narrowed her golden eyes, it was time to act.

Queen Enisi sat with her husband and King Kana and discussed, more like told her beloved what they should do for to the poor mortals in response to their latest attempt at rebellion an attempt crushed both figuratively and literally by the Titaness's military.

The two ruled the country of Floris, a mixed community of mortal humans and giants once two separate countries until Enisi wed Kana and was ruled over by both after a unification ceremony headed by their wedding.

It was necessary for peace but was a political move by Enisi once Kana's former wife passed away an act some say Enisi arranged, but only in hushed whispers.

In the king's grief Enisi had worked magics and taken advantage of the King's emotional state to rule with an iron fist much like she did with her formerly separate kingdom and treated non-giants with the disdain one would treat a disposable toy.

Floris's neighbor kingdoms were well aware of the decadent tastes of Enisi as well as her treatment of both her King, which was that of boy toy or emotional punching bag and that of her kingdom's people knowing well of the gladiatorial arenas where mortals were crushed in horrific, imaginative ways or allowed to starve as she took their crops for her own lavish feasts and parties.

The King looked weary, tired and absent as if the chore of existence mattered not to him, nor the prattling of the woman in the throne next to him. He would've been celebrating his 30th year in human terms but the loss of his wife, the state of his homeland and the toll this...woman now took on him.

Currently the Titaness looked over a group of cowering mortals forced to knee at her feet as they were dragged before her in chains.

Their crime, speaking out against their Queen.

Enisi stood, a smirk on her face as she left her throne, the sound of her shoes being removed and the soft slap of her soles as they hit the ornate marble floor.

She was a beauty, even though her green eyes betrayed the Amazonian, athletically built woman, her red hair cut short, barely covering her pointed ears and accenting her olive hued skin, the elegant gold trimmed, black knee-length dress fit her body very well and brought attention to her barely exposed cleavage, and her freshly pedicured toes wiggled at the punishment they were about to met out.

"Speaking out against your proper ruler, such blasphemy you humans should learn your place...under my foot, the sentence is death!" she pronounced with a voice that echoed across the court, taking great joy in the sudden deluge of begging and pleading.

As she prepared to act, she was being watched, watched by the eyes of judgment, the eyes of justice. Unseen by the despot queen, Aine walked up to her. If those present could see her, they'd have been in awe as the goddess walked among them.

Where Einisi was athletic and lithe like a runner. Aine was more of a warrior's build, her body athletic, firm and powerful. Her light tan complexion skin shimmering as if covered with powdered bronze beneath the grey chiton cloth, at her side a ornate black scabbard emblazoned with a gold scale and in her hand, unsheathed a long sword of silver enveloped in golden flames as her white, loose hair flowed behind her with each step.

Aine looked to the mortals at her grey sandaled feet, eyes narrowed and flaring with golden energy.

"Innocent," she whispered before she turned to Enisi and rammed the sword through her midsection until it was buried to the hilt, a burst of yellow-amber light coming from the Queen's back in the form of feathers.

For those watching it seemed as though the Queen simply stopped breathing and then screamed noiselessly as light poured from her mouth and eyes before falling cold and unmoving to the floor, the court was silent all knowing what came to pass, but fearful to mention it.

For Enisi, pain like she'd never known coursed through her very being. In the moment between seeing the goddess's image to the moment the sword exited her back she felt every sorrow she'd brought upon the people, every life that begged for clemency before being devoured or smeared across her sole. Hundreds upon hundreds of lives being ended, years of suffering all ran through her in the time it took a heart to beat.

Then darkness.

Enisi's sins would soon be weighed, measured, judged and Aine would remind her that authority has a price when misused and judgment is always present and looming in wait.

Enisi awoke on a golden floor etched with runes set in a spiral pattern as she got to her knees and her vision, still blurred with tears of pain cleared, she noticed the runes. The runes depicted were of an ancient text that became the basis for the most basic of laws and rules to govern and rule by.

She then felt eyes upon her and as she looked up she saw a grand court of law, the berths empty, and the judge's stand, crafted of white stone, empty. But she felt the eyes none the less and looked around in a panic and then focused on a mirror like portal in the floor beneath her, showing her still body and the shocked looks of her subjects and puppet king.

As she sat there,  time passed and she was unsure how much as she heard chanting behind her as ghostly images garbed in what seemed to be executioners hoods stared at her as the image shifted to each and every horrid act she'd done during her rule. With each starved person's death, each execution she felt a gnawing at her gut like guilt only deeper.

Finally the review of her deeds done, the watched feeling returned, the images silent as Aine appeared and towered over her as she once towered over mortal humans, her form clad in a stola, her  eyes the only thing visible from within the folds of cloth around her head.

"As my spirits have witnessed your many crimes, your many sins against mortal human and at times your own and as I have looked into your very soul," the Judgment goddess did not wait for Enisi to say anything before she continued.

A golden scale appeared between them and Enisi watched as each sin she'd committed in life appeared in the mirrored image below her.

The image then twisted and shrank into the form of a smoldering Opal and dropped into the left scale, which was ebony with the ancient word for sin etched across the facing.

The opposite side was made of purest ivy with the ancient rune for virtue, but unsurprisingly empty as more and more Opals filled the Ebony bowl.

There was a tense quiet over the area before Aine spoke again, "The accused may speak in their defense, what you might have to say that might stay my hand and allow you a stay of the sentence about to be meted out?"

Enisi looked to the scales, the ebony side weighed so heavily that she feared a good breeze might send the unbalanced object toppling over, then to the floor.

"Your silence is testimony enough," Aine said quietly before addressing the gathered apparitions, the hoods removed from their heads, showing the victims of Enisi's rule.

"I pass judgment upon you, with the all mother, the unseen as my witness and the blessing of those souls you've trampled underfoot," she stepped forward causing golden motes of light to rise from her barefoot as it impacted just shy of Enisi's body.

The former queen tried to move, but found her legs rooted to the spot as the floor runes blazed brightly as the judgment goddess moved forward with noiseless steps.

"You have spent the precious time you were given called life, trampling and destroying the live of those who trusted you and your rule, so shall you be trampled and condemned," Aine spoke softly, there was no pity in her voice, no anger, no malice.

Enisi felt the ground shake as Aine approached with a slow gait, the apparitions faces unreadable, stone faced as the sentence was meted out.

Aine swung her foot over Enisi's form, and a dread shadow is cast over her and she can't help but stare up, wondering if this is what everyone she'd ever tormented felt. Seeing a clean, bare sole hover over them like an executioner's axe, the press of warm flesh to yielding body and the crunches and squirts that accompanied it as the weight pressed down.

It was the same as now, only Enisi was the one being crushed. There was pain, a snap then darkness, but not death, light came to the world again for the dead queen, the same mirrored portal.

The queen sat up with a start, finding herself in a room with many golden barred cells, each containing an imprisoned soul and a mirror, was this hell? Was she dead?

"You are both dead and not, alive yet not," Aine said as her massive, golden eyed face, still shrouded in the Stola's hood appeared by the bars.


Enisi opened her mouth to ask how, why, but she was cut off.

"I will not say who petitioned me for a change in your sentence, needless to say I agreed as they begged and sacrificed to get me to change my mind," the mirror flared to life.

"They felt watching as your kingdom was undone, your rule wiped clean as your people recover and make a better way would perhaps cleanse your soul, perhaps show you a new path," her voice was, as usual unemotional as she walked off, her seat appearing and sat quietly.

Enisi was puzzled as she sat quiet and for the first time scared, powerless while she pondered just who would bargain for her life.

Then the mirror flared to life, showing the moments after her death.

Kana examined the body, horrified but knowing that seeing such a thing was divine in nature, as his masculine fingers grasped Enisi's still, chilling ones he felt color come to his face, felt a weight lifted from his shoulders.

He had initially loved his now dead queen, but as time passed and she asserted her wicked dominance, the love faded. His only regret was she never showed remorse, never realized that the nobility needs the people as much as the people need the nobility.

"I loved you as wicked as you'd become, I'd always hoped you'd change," he said quietly as he gave his dead wife's fingers one last kiss.

Watching this, unable to interact or replay sat Enisi, nude and forgotten by the mortal world in her passing, her fingers running along the mirror's edge as the words hit her.

"And so it begins," whispered Aine from behind her, still unmoving on her throne.

"The beginning embers of remorse," Enisi tried to block the goddess out, trying to dismiss the feelings she had as just a moment of weakness, she ruled how she did to keep them in line, it was for their own good...right?

She watches years pass in hours, her funeral was somber, quiet and met with neither fanfare nor great swaths of visitors. She watched as her former husband set her funeral barge alight and set it adrift into the sea before turning away.

Is this another woman in her life, a priestess of some sort given how she is dressed and a giantess, perhaps Titaness judging by how she towered over him by a few feet.

Kana cried into the woman's shoulder, his words clear on how he failed his people, failed Enisi because she wouldn't change. More time passed and Enisi felt her cold heart harden, ache more.

"He really did care," she murmured as more time passed and Kana and this new woman began to see more and more of one another, the pain in his heart leaving and her former people slowly recovering from her rule, harvests going to those who needed it, justice served by a new sect of priests devoted to the goddess who even now served as her warden.

Kana and the nameless woman continue their budding friendship, which soon turns to playful courtship, the once weary king flush with life and showing a devotion she'd been the recipient of early in their relationship. It hurt; she'd thrown away such a feeling for power, for control.

"I don't deserve this, please Goddess make it stop," she wept softly as she grasped the bars, her knuckles white.

"I will not, this is your punishment, this is justice and your soul learns more through this than if it were cast down to the dead goddess's realm," Aine replied as an unseen force twisted Enisi's head back towards the mirror.

"Your sister wished it, gave her life to me to serve as my own hand in the mortal realms for this sentence, a sister you exiled for standing against you," Aine continued unmoving still even as her captive reacted as if punched in the stomach.

"Nagisa," she murmured and remembered the argument, the hateful words and the beating she and her guards had given her younger sister before dragging her to the wastes to rot. Even now, even now she cared.

Tears flowed freely now, both from regret, humiliation and potent, helpless despair as she looked to the mirror again as Kana slipped a ring around the woman's finger and went to a knee.

The mystery woman tossed herself at him, embraced him a deep kiss as she whispered the words I do, in the old King's eyes Enisi could see she'd been forgotten, the hurt, the torment, the greed all forgotten with that one kiss.

Aine ignored the rattling of the cell bars and Enisi's yelling and raging as realization hit her.

"He was mine, my love, my bedmate; you have no claim you nameless wretch!" The anger burned out just as quick and she slumped.

"Where was this devotion when you were alive, when your people starved or were executed for the slightest misstep, do you truly think they'd care about your protest?" Aine was again face to face with Enisi, this time in the cell with her and of her height.

"All the pain you suffered, all the lives you've seen in your mind time and time again and still you protest, still you rage against things you've crafted with your own hand," the goddess backhanded the other woman disgusted at her actions.

"Even your own sister works for your redemption, undoing your harmful words to your neighbors and praying nightly for redemption," Aine showed an image of a woman, glad in ivory armor, speaking with Floris's neighbor countries, suffering attacks, boos and anger. But bares them with dignity and silence, praying they hear her words.

Enisi broke, it was all true and even in death people suffered. With hands to her face she sobbed, babbled admitted her sins as her walls of denial crumbled.

Aine offered no pity and walked away, her form shifting to a cloud of light and sifted through the bars, expanded and reformed into her noble body as she sat again.

"You've accepted your sin, now...lament and think upon them," she murmured as she sat down, the throne and the goddess sitting upon it vanishing, leaving those golden eyes to look upon the former queen, before closing and leaving Enisi to sob in silence and repent.