“Would you care to dance, emperor?” Aria asked.

Arham looked dumbfounded, he clearly didn’t know what to say to that. But he nodded, he didn’t know what it would mean to refuse her. He didn’t want to know.

He rose from his chair and extended his hand to the goddess. She accepted and they both made their way to the dancing floor of the hall. The nobility's attention remained unwavering as the emperor gracefully danced with a goddess.

Arham felt... strange. He wasn’t feeling any particularly unfamiliar emotion, he felt calm and content. That was what made it strange. Here I am, dancing with the goddess of the universe, he thought, I should feel afraid, shouldn’t I?

But he wasn’t afraid. In fact, he was felt slightly embarrassed because he liked dancing with her, he liked... her. By the love of Aria, how beautiful she is! Immediately, he saw the irony in his thoughts. He smiled slightly. No! He tried to shake those thoughts away from his mind, but there she was, with that haunting face of hers, he hasn’t felt those feelings since his wife died.

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you, dear emperor?” She asked him with her lovely voice, as they danced around the floor which was completely emptied and surrounded by the watchful eyes of the nobility.

“Why are you doing this? How are you doing this? I saw you in Tarthaghast, I saw what you did. I should feel disgusted, revolted, sickened by having to dance with you.”

“But you don’t.” She said as she made a turning move.

“No I don’t”. Arhams sighed.

“Well, “ Aria said as they made a turn “ I am not omniscient, fortunately, but if I had to guess, the very aspect of your personality that helped you become emperor of the known world is what seems to suppress those emotions, perhaps.”

Arham grumbled at that. But he didn’t say anything as they continued to dance. He thought about what she meant, but didn’t understand.

“Or maybe it’s my magical charm.” Aria added in a playful tone. They finished they dance, and made their way to their dining table.

“I still don’t understand.” Arham said as he sat opposite of her on the table.

“You see, emperor, perhaps it is the display of power on that day that that attracts you. You yourself are seen as a demigod here, perhaps your legends even have you portrayed as a son of a god, maybe my son!” She giggled at that. “Nevertheless, your status here gives you power, immense power. You could practically order anyone here to do whatever you wanted. You have come to like your position very much, you have come to enjoy the feeling that you are in control, the feeling that so many people depend on you and are at your mercy.”

Aria paused as the servants came to serve the various culinary delights of this evening, then she continued. “Yet you are limited at that, ordering around. You just are at the top of the organizational hierarchy of your empire. Your power is an illusion, something the people here have unconsciously sacrificed their freedom for so that they could gain stability. It could crumble any day, just as it has happened so many times for so many rulers in the past, I bet.”

She paused again, taking a sip from the wine. Then she leaned back on her chair, looking at Arham with her soul-piercing eyes.“ But what you saw that day, in the capital, that was pure power. Limitless power. Not an illusion. Power you cannot fight.” She smiled. “Maybe that’s why you feel so calm around me when you should feel terrified. You want to know what it feels like. You want to have the power to do anything you wanted without caring for the consequences, you want to be a god.”

Arham looked stunned. “Or as I said, perhaps its just my irresistible charm.” She giggled.

“Never!” He replied which slamming his fist on the table, Aria raised an eyebrow.

“I would never do those horrible things you did to my people!” He was visibly angry, though even he didn’t know if it was because she appeared to not care the slightest on the consequences of her actions, or because she was right.

“I don’t understand how that doesn’t move you, how you can take so many lives so easily, even if they are your creation, how you can even enjoy causing so much suffering with your... “ He shifted his gaze down her body, towards her breasts, and continued but was obscured by the table between them.

The hall fell silent again, the dancing couples stopped, but the music continued. The emperor’s outburst was heard from the entire crowd, and it made them uncomfortable. Aria remained calm, and smiled, as always.

“Perhaps the time has come for me to go, dear emperor.” She stood up, as gracefully as she could with her gown. She had to be careful not to ruin her dress, then turned towards Arham, looking at him with her soul-piercing eyes again.

“When you are a god, good and evil become meaningless. You create your own morals. You learn to appreciate certain... pleasures. One of them, is chaos.” she said as turned, stepping towards the dancing floor, eyeing the crowd. She appeared to be looking for someone, then quickly found a couple, Lineu and Sidete and moved towards them.

They were noticeably uncomfortable at having the attention of Aria, but she approached them unceremoniously and extended both her arms towards them. A bright flash of light emanating from her blinded everyone in the room momentarily, and as soon as their vision came back, they noticed that the couple had vanished.

Or so they thought, because as they took a closer look, they noticed something small in front of Aria. They couldn’t quite make it out at first, but upon closer inspection, their curious gazes turned to terror as they realized it was the Mandy couple, each only an inch tall. Loud gasps were heard in unison and wine-filled glasses broke as they fell from their hands, too shocked at what they were witnessing.

The couple itself was too stunned and disoriented to understand what had happened. They looked around on their level at first, but Aria’s gown was blocking most of their sight. It felt unnatural to them, they looked behind but the landscape was unrecognizable to their eyes. Then they shifted their gaze higher up, and as their eyes focused, they saw them. Hundreds of people with their terror-filled stares. As realization dawned upon them, they turned back again, and were met with the ever smiling Aria.

Without giving them a chance to react, she raised her right foot while lifting her skirt, and stepped mercilessly on the couple. A jet of blood exploded outward from her sole as the couple was reduced to nothing more than a red stain on the dance floor. Aria looked up and watched as the crowd’s dread-filled gaze shifted slowly from where she stepped, to her face. They were met with a you’re-next look.

Loud screams preceded the total panic that broke out inside as noble lords and ladies pushed and shoved themselves while trying to get away from her. Arham remained in his seat, watching, chin rested on his hands as Aria stood there, hands raised slightly and breathing deeply, apparently reveling on the chaos she has caused with that simple act. He wasn’t feeling afraid, he somehow knew she wouldn’t do any harm to him.

He continued staring at her, trying to figure her out. But his train of thoughts was cut as she turned towards him again and approached amidst the chaos inside.

“You asked me why, earlier in the evening.” She said. Arham frowned at her, then simply nodded, he knew he should listen very carefully. She sat down on her chair again.

“Thousands of years ago, I was just like you, a simple human. I lived on Earth, mankind’s origin, during a time when we learned how to reach for the stars. We traveled to them, discovered different worlds, prospered. At first, we thought we were alone, all the riches of the universe for us. But then we met... something. An unstoppable force, and it was hostile. We couldn’t resist, it destroyed world after world, until it finally destroyed everything on Earth too.” Aria’s eyes lowered, unfocused, perhaps remembering something.

Arham didn’t know what to make of this. There he stood, being lectured from by a god on the origins and history of mankind apparently. He didn’t know how to feel.

“But before Earth fell too, there was a... miracle. Something that I’ve been trying to understand ever since. It granted me the power that I posses now. And it allowed me to save mankind.”

“Save?” Arham asked her, confused. He stood, pointing his finger at her angrily. “You’re a monster, how can you claim to be our saviour?” Aria’s eyes still remained unfocused. There was a moment of silence, then she fixed her eyes on Arham again.

“That day, when you activated the beacon, you proved something to me. You proved that you were close to achieving a milestone in your development. You proved that at any moment, you could explode in technology. It could take millennia, but it could even happen in just a few centuries or even decades. You could achieve the same thing we did in my time, reach for the stars.” She said.

“I cannot allow that. I cannot allow you to go out there unrestrained and meet the same fate we once did. That’s why I’ve come here. I destroyed your capital, and I will come for many more of your cities because you need to be reset, I need to induce a dark age on this world. Just like I did so many times in the past to so many worlds...” She drifted in thoughts there for a moment, again.

Arham was speechless. It was too much to take in. It was too much to understand. “But-”

“There’s no but there. There are hundreds of worlds, just like this one, where I preserve mankind so that one day we may return to our home worlds safely. I allow you to remain independent for some time, allow you to organize, prosper, live normally for centuries and thousands of years. But each and every world will someday meet the same fate that you world is experiencing right now.” She stood up.

“Oh and one more thing. I will take your pretty little nobles with me to play with. Let’s see how well you can keep everything together without them.” She smiled. Then, with a bright flash of light, just like in the capital where she was hundreds of feet tall, she was gone. But the flashes of light didn’t stop, they continued as they struck the lords and ladies that were trying to run away. Soon, everyone was gone except Arham and the servants.

The emperor himself just stood there, motionless. “But...”

***

Feuna lay curled up on the glass, staring at the goddes high above them who was straddling their bowl-prison, looking down upon the remaining group of people that had survived everything so far. Her piss, her sacrifices, her bath, everything. She looked at the goddess’s eyes, perhaps trying to figure out what horrible fate she had in store for them now. Would she smear them on her breasts, smother them inside her cunt? Perhaps something new, like eating them? Feuna didn’t think the goddess had limits to her cruelty.

Her sister, Mana, lay beside her, holding her arms around her. Feuna could see the fear in her eyes. She could somehow handle everything that was happening to her, but she dreaded the thought of losing her sister to that monster. She was everything Feuna had left in her life. It was a miracle that after all they had to endure, both were still alive.

But she had a bad feeling about this. Feuna saw something in her goddess’s eyes, something different from the usual. Then she jolted out of her’s sisters embrace as the goddess lowered her hand, gripping the side of the bowl. The glass surface offered nothing to hold on too as everyone tried to prepare as best as they could for the inevitable vertigo that would follow as the goddess lifted the bowl into the air.

Feuna and her sister held each other as tightly as possible. They didn’t want to be separated yet again, and if they had to die they wanted to die together. They managed to hold on to each other as they were glued to the surface from the sudden acceleration as the goddess lifted the bowl. Their bodies were strangely more robust than on their world and could handle something which normally should have rendered them unconscious, of course they didn’t understand why.

But then, with a sudden motion of the bowl, everything changed. They were lifted in the air and then... nothing. Feuna didn’t understand what was happening, she felt weightless. She was in heaven. It happened too fast. She could see tens of other people around her, suspended in the air as the horizon changed it’s shape too fast to be recognizable. She instinctively turned her head upward, and for the briefest moments, she understood what was happening. They were falling. Numbing fear encompassed her as she saw the ground coming down on her too fast. She held on tightly to her sister as she mentally prepared for the inevitable pain.

---

Aria straddled the glass bowl containing her tormented toys. She thought about what she should do with them. They had endured so much, maybe they deserved a quick death. But the overpowering sensation she gained from making them suffer so much while they weren’t able to do anything about it was too much.

She had ordered the nobility to be put in the room. It was a special room in which Aria liked to play her games with her playthings. The nobility were a certain group of people that she loved to torment the most since they had a certain mentality installed on their psyche by being on top of most of the world. So she decided she would play one last time with the group that remained on the bowl. She decided to do it in her bedroom, so she grabbed the bowl on it’s edge and lifted it.

But even gods were prone to making mistakes. Such was the case, when her hand slipped and  made the bowl spin as she was lifting it. The poor tinies were thrown into the air as the bowl reached into the air, then the artificial gravity of the ship mercilessly pulled it to the ground. Fortunately, the glass didn’t break. But the unfortunate shrunken people were sprawled on the ground from the impact. Even their bodies couldn’t endure such a fall without breaking.

“Fuck!” She crouched and observed them. Most had terrible injuries, some were dead while a few lucky ones remained unscathered, it seemed. They were in no condition to play with, Aria didn’t like her toys to be distracted from mental obstacles like massive pain while she played her games with them. Aria sighed. She decide to give them a quick death after all. So she rose, and lifted her foot above a group of dead and dying people.

---

Feuna woke suddenly, her body ached everywhere. She looked up, and held her breath for a moment as her eyes were greeted by the all-encompassing body of the goddess. What... then she remembered. Mana! She quickly stood up, surprised to have survived that fall with bruises only and perhaps a few cracked ribs. She tried to ignore the pain as she looked around, trying to find her sister. People were screaming painfully all around her, and the goddess was apparently watching them. Was it intentional? She thought, but didn’t have time to think about it too much.

She ran around, looking at the people, blood splattered everywhere, bones sticking out of various body parts. She didn’t have to look around too much, she quickly found Mana. She was dead. Her body lay motionless amongst the dead and dying. Her skull had cracked.

Feuna’s legs trembled as approached her sister’s body. She ignored the moving shadow around her as she fell to her knees and held Mana’s body on her arms. Tears rolled on her cheeks as she cried quietly. Why? She asked to no one in particular. She had forcefully forgotten her habit of praying to Aria. She looked to her right while still holding her sister’s body in her arms, and watched as a massive foot descended upon a group of people, obliterating their bodies. It twitched and turned, smearing them in the ground, then lifted up again.

Feuna wasn’t afraid to die, she was afraid that she would join her sister while never having the force to fight back, to avenge her. Anger welled up inside her, deep rooted anger. She had survived on the goddess’s piss for so long, had to witness the most macabre acts possible, all that for what? To end like this? The anger surrounded her as the pillar of flesh descended yet again from the sky, very close to her. The ground shook as a dozen or so bodies were rendered to smears, joining the others.

She let Mana’s body rest as she stood up, the pain had disappeared. I’m not going to die just like that. She felt a massive feeling of power surround her as her anger turned into a force, giving her unimaginable strength. It felt strangely familiar to her, as if she was used to it. She looked up as she saw the foot raise for a third time, and position above her. She looked at the goddess’s face, looking at her uncaring expression. She was so angry at her unconcerning attitude. Feuna released her pool of power instinctively and screamed at Aria as her foot descended upon the Feuna.

---

Aria stepped on the group of people nearest to the bowl. What a shame. She thought. I could have had so much more fun with you. She lifted her foot and stepped on another group, their bodies bursting pleasurably under her sole. Most were oblivious to what was happening. She lifted her foot yet again, and was about to crush another group, when she felt it. She her foot stopped in mid-air.

It was tiny, barely distinguishable to her, but nevertheless she felt it. It was a push, a resisting sensation, but her foot hadn’t touched the ground yet. She removed her foot, looking at the group she was about to crush. She crouched down, and there, in their midst, was a woman, standing and defyingly looking up at her.

Could it really be? Aria thought excitingly.