The town of Cemia was a rather bustling place. At the crossroads between two major cities, it saw its fair share of travelers. Caravans stopped over between their travels, vast farmlands covered the rolling hills of the land around Cemia. The roads were well paved and patrolled by the local governor’s forces. Homes were built from stone and wood, standing sturdy and made far better than the average countryside village. On average around two thousand souls called the town home. As with most places in Semea’s rather secular society, the gods were paid a modest tribute with small shrines. What really dominated the place was a massive library sculpted from marble. It was truly on course to become a brilliant city of Semea, a power in the region. 

One day however, things began to change. It was a day that all in the town would remember to their last breath. The day the sky darkened suddenly. Clouds formed from seemingly nowhere, rumbling with thunder on high. Rain started to fall, people rushing into their homes but a great wind swept through the town, downs slamming shut as people approached. From the sky, they could hear a voice. A great and terrible voice that boomed like the thunder itself. One that even sent some people to their knees on the wet ground.

“Hear my voice, mortals. I am the herald of Aigle, Daughter of Odeena and God of Telos. Sinners of Semea, you have forsaken the Gods and insult them. Your value of the written word over the faith in the divine lays bare for all to see your hubris. In three days’ time your judgment will come from Aigle Herself. You will all die in despair for your folly and be shown the error of your ways before the end. You may take the time to prepare yourselves in whatever pitiful manners you deem. In the end your fate is written and sealed!”

Of course all that heard the words knew well what that meant. A scion was coming. A daughter of one of the gods. Beings worshiped as demi-gods by many. Semea was not one of those places of course, to the people of Semea the Scions were not divine and indeed there had to be a better explanation behind the gods than them being… well gods. They still prepared as best they could. Heading the defenses was one Cornia Valis, daughter of the governor.

“Do you think we can fend off a Scion, Lady Valis?” Asked one of the older men at the council meeting.

The blue haired woman smirked. “I’ve dealt with big monsters before. Ogres, trolls, you name it I’ve fought it. Yeah, we can win.” She said with a thumbs up. “I’ve personally been training the men here so they should be able to chase away any Scion.

One woman cleared her throat, a wealthy merchant. “Maybe we should try and pay tribute to this… Aigle. It seems far less risky. Rumor from Rosso has it that she is very formidable.” The woman said reasonably. “Scions are merciless and powerful, so we might lose far less if we simply bend the knee and do as she desires.”

One man, a rather tall and proud looking one, slammed his fist on the table. “Unacceptable! This is Semea, not some place a Scion can just walk all over. We don’t owe her anything simply by her existing. My magic will turn her skin to ash if she thinks she is taking Cemia without resistance!”

Cornia smirked. “Matthias is correct. If we give into the demands of some minor Scion, well, we just open the door for everyone to push us around. We have his magic, my prowess and all of our militia.” She tucked strands of blue hair behind her ear before looking at an older blue haired man sitting at the head of the table. “The decision lies with you, Father.”

The man, Lord Valis, stroked his short beard as he considered the matter. “Semea is a place people can live without fear of some Scion coming to step upon their homes. A place of knowledge and learning, where people aren’t afraid to share new ideas. If we simply surrender to this Scion, we undermine that idea.” The man said. “I give you my blessing to fight. Sir Matthias, my daughter. I leave the defense of the town to your expertise.”

It was these words that had both Cornia and Matthias standing with well over a hundred spearmen before the town gates.  The former was dressed in full blue colored armor, holding a spear and a shield. An orange scarf was tied around her neck, bright and obvious. The magus however was dressed in thick dark robes and held a staff at his side. He was staring out into the distance. The scouts reported that a woman was on her way. Down the main road curiously enough. She had made no effort to mask her approach.

Cornia frowned. “It’s as though she thinks she can just stroll right in and do whatever she wants without resistance.” She remarked to the man at her side.

The mage snorted. “I’ve placed a number of wards around the walls and the path to the town. They are set to a trigger in the presence of a Scion. She is in for a rude surprise if she thinks just because Odeena is her mother she can walk over this place.”

There was naught they could do but wait. The sky was not dark as it had been days before when the announcement was made. The sun was shining down upon Cemia and all within it. Most of the townsfolk had gathered at the library and were hiding out within its walls; others were hiding in their own homes. There was a clear edge to the air as the defenders waited. It seemed the Scion was taking her sweet time. Indeed many of the men seemed to be getting antsy as the minutes dragged on and they stood out in the heat in full armor.

Finally, over the crest of the hill appeared a single lone figure. She wasn’t big or anything like that, not a giant as the stories claimed. She was simply a woman. If Cornia squinted she could make out pink hair and fine clothes. So that was their Scion then. The woman simply stood and looked over the town from her stop atop the hill before starting to walk down the cobbled stones towards the town.

“So you are Aigle!? Well, Scion, you aren’t setting one foot down inside of this town!” Cornia shouted as her men took formations, spears atop shields to form before the gateway.

There were sparks upon the ground as Aigle walked closer and closer to the town. Lightning blasted up from the earth to assail her. Flames burst forth from another spot and ice from another. The wards that Matthias had set up were going off one by one, smashing into Aigle with a decent amount of magical power. It would have been enough to cause anyone to balk; indeed the militia looked at the sheer magical power in clear awe.

“By the gods, I think you got her, Matthias. Remind me to never return a book past its due date.” Cornia said.

The head librarian snorted. “Simple tricks I picked up in my adventuring days. I’d imagine what’s left of her will be in pieces.”

The smoke cleared and when it did… the pinkette still stood. She had stopped walking though and was currently brushing some soot off of her rather rich looking white and purple toga. The militia sounded shocked. Cornia looked at the woman in shock, mirroring the look of her companion. “I-Impossible! That amount of magic would kill any man or woman, I don’t care how tough they are!”

The pinkette looked over the defenders. It was then that she spoke and when she spoke, Cornia felt weak at the knees. There was something in her voice. It was so smooth, so pleasant to listen to. Almost like a charm. Like she would have given anything just to listen to this woman talk more, forever. “I did tell you to make your preparations as I was hoping for some entertainment, but it appears that you are going to disappoint me. Such a shame. Ah well.” She mused with a shrug.

Cornia gritted her teeth. “You bitch… charge! We’ll overwhelm her with numbers!” She bellowed.

Her men charged forward and she along with them. Aigle made no effort to stop her men from coming close to her and indeed allowed their spears to thrust forth. They shattered upon some barrier that surrounded her. Shafts splintered and metal tips cracked. The pinkette simply lifted her hand up and inspected the back of her hand as she allowed the throng of men and women to attack her. Cornia growled and thrust her own spear forth, the tip not shattering but it was held at bay by the shield. She snarled at the pinkette.

“You bitch, take this seriously!” She shouted.

Aigle looked at Cornia and lifted her brow. “Tell me something, Mortal. Do you take insects seriously? What about dust mites? Perhaps you take small infants seriously, or the particles that float through the air?” The pinkette mused aloud. “I take you no more seriously than the dirt on the bottom of my sandals, Mortal. Allow me to show you why.”  She spoke a simple couple of words in a language that Cornia didn’t understand and the barrier around Aigle flashed a pink hue.

Cornia, suddenly felt as though she had been stabbed in the side and let out a scream, staggering back and dropping her spear. The sensation was not shared by her alone. Every single one of her men that had struck Aigle’s barrier found wounds opening upon their bodies. Some were stabbed in the chest, others in the eye. The barrier vanished from around her but all around Aigle men were squirming in pools of their own blood. The pinkette simply continued to walk. She didn’t bother to step over any men that were injured on the ground. She simply walked on them. Like they were no different than the stones that cobbled the road.

“Don’t you just ignore me you bitch!” Cornia shouted as she fought through the pain and lunged at her with her spear aimed for the back of Aigle’s head.

There was a clang that sounded out and Cornia had a look of shock on her face. Aigle had turned slightly and gripped the tip of her spear between her fingers. Lithe dainty digits held the weapon at bay, not strong or muscular in any way but the fingers of a woman that had never held a weapon in her life. The soldier strained hard and long, trying to continue to thrust forth into Aigle but there was no way she could budge her spear held between the pinkette’s fingers.

“A fine spear. Enchanted it appears. Durable.” Aigle remarked. She muttered a few more words in that same language and there was another glow of pink, this time around the spear.

Cornia blinked as she felt the spear shaft leave her grip suddenly. Instead it dangled at the size of a toothpick between Aigle’s fingers. The pinkette held it up and smirked. “You have no idea how hard it is to find things durable enough to pick clean any dirt that gets under my nails. It's such a pain.” The pinkette remarked before continuing to walk.

Cornia fell to her knees. She… she had just shrunk her spear. That spear had slain ogres, trolls, countless bandits and monsters. The pinkette had shrunken it like it had been nothing to her. The blue haired woman couldn’t believe it. The power of this woman… just what the hell were they trying to fight?

Matthias growled. “You aren’t getting past me, Scion.” He said as he threw out his hand. He shouted words of arcane power, pinpricks of flame forming in the air around him.

A trio of firebolts flew through the air towards Aigle. The pinkette simply allowed them to connect. The flames winked out of existence as soon as they made contact with her. Aigle lifted a brow. “Ah… one of Semea’s famous mages. I’m afraid magic that is cast by those weaker than myself has no effect on me if they are mortal. My apologies.” Aigle said with a smirk.

The man’s brow twitched. “Weaker? Try this then!”

From the ground in front of him burst forth a spear made of hardened earth, flying through the air right for the pinkette. Aigle meanwhile sighed as the spear made contact with her. The stone shattered and burst outward in a shower of sand and rock fragments. Aigle looked down at her toga covered in sand and lifted one of her sandal clad feet up with a frown on her face.

“Ugh… I *hate* the feeling of sand getting stuck between my toes.” She said.

Matthias had a look of utter disbelief on his face as Aigle lifted her hand up. There was a glow that surrounded her fingers as she whispered a single word under her breath.

The next sound that rang through the air was that of the man screaming. Cornia watched in horror from her place kneeling upon the ground. Oh god. OH GOD. She could see the man being torn apart, flesh from bone, by the radiant light until there was only a pile of ashes that remained where he had been standing. The blue haired woman felt her heart start pounding in terror. What was this woman? Was this… was this a Scion? Was this really what a Scion was like?

The pinkette snorted. “Now look at what you’ve done. You’ve gotten your ashes in with the sand. My slaves will have to work their tongues’ dry to get it out.”

With that sideshow out of the way and basically the entire resistance of the town dealt with, Aigle continued on her way. Those hiding in their homes huddled together and whimpered as the woman walked through town. This woman with an aura of charisma wrapped around her had destroyed their defenses in a couple of minutes. It had amounted to nothing in the end. Just a slight annoyance for this woman. This Demi-God.

As she walked, Aigle slowly, very slowly, started to swell in size. She was making her way toward the center of the town. Her shadow slowly grew. And grew. *And grew.* Eventually the woman became a three hundred meter tall giant who cast a shadow upon everyone in the town, towering above everything. Their tallest buildings didn’t even measure to her ankles. The pinkette looked around at the city at her feet. Really, from that high up it looked like a toy city.

Her eyes were zeroed in on the library. “So this is your famed library is it? The one that takes the place of a grand temple to the gods?” She mused. She started walking toward it, her booming steps shaking the earth. Buildings trembled and shook and people lost their balance and fell over. The shadow of her sandal rose up over one home and came down, a loud crunch sounding out. An explosion of wood and stone scattered out from the point where her foot made impact, the rest of it crunching underfoot. The people inside of it barely had a second to register what had happened to them before Aigle stepped on them. She lifted her other foot up and lifted it over another house, crushing it beneath her step. She wasn’t even making it dramatic, the pink haired Scion was simply keeping a walking pace. Yet even this was enough to devastate the town.

After the first two steps people started spilling out of their homes like ants, realizing perhaps that wouldn’t do much good to protect them from harm. They scattered around Aigle’s feet, screaming and wailing and scrambling in the shadow of this titan. Aigle barely took note and continued making her way toward the library. The pinkette’s sandal clad feet lifted up over a young couple trying to flee and came down mercilessly, her walking steps reducing them to a pair of stains upon the sole. Her rising step dragged through the ground slightly at the tip of her sandal, smashing into a trio of people and kicking them lightly. For them however it was enough they were obliterated in a cloud of red.

“Eh?” She looked down as she felt something get caught under her toes. There was a woman there that had probably gotten caught between her toes and the sandal when she had lifted her foot up. She was screaming and blubbering as her arm had been crushed. Aigle lifted a brow. “You know if you wanted to get under my toes, you only had to ask.” The pinkette boomed.

The woman shrieked as Aigle brought her toes back down, smothering her under them. She could feel her squirming against the doughy flesh of her toes, trying to escape from under them. It would only take a slight amount of effort to completely paste her if she so desired. Aigle evidently had other plans though. “Feel privileged mortal, today I’ll bestow upon you an honor for your devotion.” She said. Slowly the woman would feel weaker, feel herself draining away under the toes. The digits looming over her got bigger and bigger. “You can be under my toes for the rest of your tiny mortal life. You’ll never escape my sandal; it will become your universe. Your life will be spent under my foot. A true honor.” Aigle boomed.

She could feel the woman’s squirming for a bit before she could feel nothing at all. The mortal simply shrank until she was microbial. A nanometer upon the sandal of the pinkette, the whole of one of her toeprints now her existence. Even though Aigle’s toe was upon the sandal the distance between her and it made the endless flesh look like the mortal’s sky. The woman let out a scream that no one would ever hear, not even the gods would notice a microbe like her.

Aigle smirked as she kept on her walk, stopping before the library. She looked down at the proud structure. “As impressive as I expected you to be. I do enjoy libraries, you know, however the hubris of making it bigger than your little shrines to the gods.” She clicked her tongue. “Fortunately for you all hiding in there I have no desire to crush a place of knowledge. Especially not one so beautiful.”

Everyone inside heard her booming words and let out sighs of relief. They weren’t going to be crushed inside of the library. Instead Aigle did something peculiar. She looked around at her feet for mortals running past them. The pinkette reached down and grabbed a handful of the screaming people in her fist, the squirming mass in her fist letting out muffled screams. At least until Aigle curled her fingers tighter, an industrial press coming down upon them and blood spraying and dripping between her fingers.

That done she started drawing upon the ground around the library, using the blood from the people she had crushed to make arcane runes. “You know, I have a wife that loves reading and libraries. Her whole home is a library.” Aigle mused as she drew. “I lived in those walls for a year; it was how we came to love one another. It was exactly a year ago today actually. So I was musing over what to get a woman like that. An anniversary present.”

She smirked as she finished drawing her circle. “Then it hit me. I could get her another whole library to store more books.” She said with a laugh.

There was a flash of bright red light as the runes Aigle had drawn were finished. The air around the massive library crackled and popped as the people inside looked around nervously. Then, suddenly, the whole building simply disappeared. It was gone from the town in the blink of an eye, only bare earth left where it had once stood. It was as though it had never existed.

Those trapped inside of the library however looked outside. They could see what looked like a grassy field outside, somewhere wholly different from where they had been before. It was bright out and sunny. A brave soul dared to walk outside the library, looking around. When he looked at the sky, he fell over and let out a loud yell of shock and surprise. Looming above, looking down at them, was a single massive pink eye. It was beyond a set of clouds drifting on high, an endless ocean of pink that was vast beyond comprehension. A sight that defied reality.

Aigle looked down into the small ring between her fingers, looking inside at the tiny library she had imprisoned. “You should all feel honored. You are going to be owned by my wife, Morrigan. It is far more than you’d have ever accomplished collectively. Being jewelry for a Goddess.” Aigle boomed with a laugh. She pocketed the ring a moment later before looking out at the rest of the town. “As for the rest…”

Aigle swelled upward in size, the ground rumbling with the force of her growth. Her feet expanded and crushed homes and people as they tried to flee. The walls of her sandals simply chased those that fled and ground them to paste beneath them. Buildings were crushed and battered aside. The shadow she cast enveloped so much land it seemed there was no escape from it. Aigle topped out at her maximum size, towering over the whole of the town at roughly a mile in size. Her feet already filled half the town, her toes drumming in the confines of her sandal eagerly. She lifted her foot up over the untouched parts, her sole looming over those that had not yet been crushed. Many got to their knees, begging to be spared and praying to Aigle or any of the gods for deliverance. Dirt and debris rained down from the bottom of her sandal sole, smashing into remaining buildings that were standing or crushing the people below.

“…You are unnecessary.” She said coldly, bringing her foot down with a thunderous boom. People, homes, it was all swallowed up under the shadow of Aigle’s foot. The ground shook, quivering in pain as she crushed a town out of existence. A shockwave from the impact sent trees in the distance buckling and cracking into splinters. She arched her foot up and slowly ground it into the earth, making sure she got everyone and that no one in the town had survived.

She lifted her foot and moved it aside, looking at the barren patch of ground that was now the graveyard of the town of Cemia. There were bits of rubble in the imprint of Aigle’s step and more than a few mangled forms and stains buried beneath the ground. It was a frightful sight, a once bustling town of Semea completely wiped away in divine judgement. Aigle sneered on high, her eyes glittering with a vain pleasure in the sheer power she held over the land. 

“Perhaps you’ll serve as a warning to the rest of this worthless country of mortals. To always remember who stands above them.” She boomed, only the dead likely to hear.

Only, someone had survived. Perhaps Aigle had simply forgotten about her. Perhaps the speck was beneath her notice. Cornia looked on in horror as she saw the giant crush the town, blown back by the sheer force of impact. She felt black spots dance before her eyes, watching the titan as she finished crushing the town. She idly scraped the remains off on a nearby cliff like the whole town had been little more than filth to her and walked away, her booming steps rattling Cornia’s world.

Cornia didn’t have thoughts of revenge or anything like that. No. It was fear. Fear of the gods. Fear she would carry for the rest of her life as she would no doubt warn others in Semea. Warn them of the God Aigle and her wrath.