Posted 10/24/2010

Last Updated 10/24/2010

            The sweltering heat was just beginning to intensify as the sun emerged over the peaks of the Saphrodine peaks onto a sky devoid of clouds. Spring was quickly fading to memory and the adamant heat promised a relentless summer. Still the farmers labored in the fields to yield what was already beginning to indicate a meager harvest. Many families were going to starve in the coming winter if the heat didn’t slacken, but weather was indifferent to the needs of men.

            Pulrik had worked this land long before his youth abandoned him. Age had tempered his resolve, and although each day was another battle, one he was eventually destined to lose, he persisted. The aches and pains of his labor had tormented him for as long as he could recall. He had endured worse. The day was still young.

            A cool breeze wafted over him, a brief relief from unrelenting torridity. However, something was usual; there was shade. Squinting, he looked up to the horizon and could distinguish the silhouette of something advancing over the peak of a mountain. From this distance he could scarcely discern the outline of a human figure. Nobody ever traveled across the Saphrodines, or at least not in Pulrik’s lifetime. It was lunacy to even contemplate such an ambitious feat. And yet the figure was walking directly towards him.

***

            The sun burned Kraeta’s bare back raw. Intensely focusing her eyes, she could distinguish the outlying farms of what indicated a nearby city. Glancing back, she could see that her cohort was about half a league away making their way up the final peak. As they approached the anticipation on each of their faces became more and more apparent; a mirror of her own fervent ardor. After a month of traveling, she had finally exited the encumbering somber mountains and could appreciate what the fruits of their labor would herald. The land she looked down upon was a surreal resplendent mixture of green fertility, a sharp contrast to her and her people’s desolate home.

            She lingered while the cohort caught up. The group of soldiers, four hundred in number, would have been an imposing sight to most. Kraeta wasn’t like most. The soldiers barely overtopped her ankle. Even after centuries of fighting alongside these miniscule soldiers, she could still sense the awe they harbored every time one of her kind was in their presence. They had seen her work before. The truth was she was one of them once, but that was another lifetime ago. Now she was something greater, singularly as powerful as the entire cohort and the other three which accompanied it.

The captain of the approaching cohort strode forward to meet her. “I can see farms and granaries. Means they are growing wheat. Also probably means that there is a city within a few leagues.”

 Kraeta made no effort to strip the eagerness from her voice, “It’s been a long while since I’ve got to…play with a city.”

The captain stared down at the flat expanse of farmland spread out before them for a moment before he spoke, “Well let’s change that shall we.” his shaky voice betraying his feigned assurances

Kraeta’s mouth twisted into a malicious leer before she took off down the slopes.

***

It had taken moments for the silhouette on the slope to cover the half dozen leagues between Pulrik and the mountains. As it got closer it grew more distinct, the figure was emphatically feminine, of a slim robust build, her movements lithe and fluid as she ran. She was nearly naked, with the exception of a paltry leather brazier and skirt that only just covered the top of her thighs. She carried a spear about a foot taller than herself. It didn’t take long for him to realize the peculiarity; she was enormous, over a hundred feet tall he ventured. Pulrik recoiled fear, realizing the speed at which she was traveling, and directly at him at that. With vigor he had not felt in years he turned and ran. Towards what, he had no idea, but it was away from her.

He never had a chance. In the time it took him to cover a hundred yards she was upon him. The shadow of her foot descended upon him before crushing him into paste.

***

Kraeta felt the familiar satisfying crunch beneath her foot as she crushed the decrepit old farmer. It had been far too long since she had last experienced such a sensation. His remnants clung to her sole like wet tar as she ran, endeavoring to crush as many structures underfoot as possible on her dash towards the city. The first semblances of buildings were a few leagues off in the distance. It was, by her home’s standards, a thriving assemblage of human architecture.

Moments later, she was stepping over the futile walls, barely reaching halfway up her thighs, obvious evidence that this land had never warred with an Urtyke before. The city was entirely ill prepared for her. Whatever defenses they had were intended to stop foes their own diminutive pathetic size. Arrows and quarrels shot by the astonished defenders ineffectually bounced off of her reinforced skin painlessly. The infantry, haphazardly attempting to get into formation, were quickly dispatched by the blunt end of her spear, dead on impact and thrown with extraordinary force before colliding into the tenuous structures, some collapsing into wreckage.

She forcefully brought her knee into the stone wall, demolishing entire segments of it and annihilating the archers and crossbowman in the avalanche of stone which blockaded the gates to city. Ignorant of the futility of their retaliation, they continued to fire more and more projectiles and continued to be systematically slaughtered.

Pain, almost entirely an unfamiliar sensation to Kraeta, enveloped her right side. It burned incessantly, and scanning downward she could survey the smoke and flames rising off her skin where some sort of charge had exploded. Dropping her spear, she gripped her side with her right hand; it was slick with blood that now cascaded down her side, a waterfall of crimson. Her hand fingered the gap where the chunk of flesh had been blown clean off. Glancing further downward she locked onto the soldiers preparing to fire another munition. Her free hand arced down, swiftly crushing them into pulp. Artillery like that was quite rare in her homeland since Urtykes provided all the necessary destructive force needed to eradicate any semblance of a defense.

Looking around, it seemed that the remaining defenders were already scattering. Her enhanced restorative skin was already closing, new flesh growing and coalescing where it had been eradicated. Her lips curled into a feral malevolent grin as she surveyed the pandemonium of the river of people who rushed through the streets in a struggle to escape, oblivious to the fact that the exits they stormed to were obstructed by debris. She brought her fist down onto the torrent of people pulverizing dozens with a single swing. Again and again she massacred them until her chest began to heave with exhaustion, her arms painted a thick shimmering lustrous red. Thousands upon thousands died before her implacable onslaught, a savage slaughter unlike anything this side of the Saphrodines had ever witnessed.

Fires burned haphazardly throughout the ruins of the city, now seemingly devoid of life other than the scarlet coated titan who sat decimating the remnants of the ruins, indulging in the fragility of the pathetic structures which had comprised the once majestic city. From the distance she could make out the beginnings of the cohort approaching the city. It would have taken them hours to cross the distance. Glancing skyward, she realized the sun had reached its pinnacle and exactly how long she had been satiating in the devastation. She always did have a habit of getting carried away.

The captain approached her, the abhorrence of the spectacle clearly disquieting him, “Well it seems everything went…as expected” he said, apprehension wracking his voice. Kraeta simply gave him a contented smile, her face spattered with the crimson flecks.