Maia stared at her gloved hands, feeling the power she wielded. So abstract, yet so real.
It was there, under her control. She could summon it now, whenever she wanted to. It was no illusion or dream. No figment of her imagination. And she now understood that it had been always there, hidden in the background of noises within her mind. Like a numb limb that had its blood flow restored.
But it was her emotional state that she found strange. She felt calm, unwavering. There was no fear within her anymore. No worry, no burden of responsibility. She felt free, unshackled from all the pain and grief that she’d experienced in the past few months.
Even beyond that, she felt so much more than that unimportant speck that she had been her entire life. She had the attention of the world now, and she had the power to shape it. She was no mere human anymore. It had changed her completely.
But she also had so many questions. She needed to find the golden-haired woman, somehow knowing that she was alive despite what had happened to the capital. But she didn’t know how she’d be able to find her.
She was in no hurry though.
Freeing her senses to her surroundings, she looked up at the crowd that surrounded her in the middle of the town’s square, listening to the noise they generated. Kris’s soldiers protected her from the press as she picked individual shouts and cries.
Goddess! Some of them screamed. Heavensent! Angel! Protector! Other cited scripture, and many remained silent, watching her with utter amazement and reverence.
“Shut up everyone!” Kris screamed, trying to calm the crowd. But it was futile.
Maia smiled. They had witnessed a divine act. Nobody would be able to remain calm at that. She had towered several hundred feet above them, dwarfing them completely. She had commanded the body of a deity, and they were rightly excited about it, even though it was for the wrong reasons.
Her thoughts surprised her, how easily she thought to be above them.
Kris still screamed, and his soldiers pushed against the crowd, but there was no subduing it, they were too restless. Maia tucked her arms within the pockets of her officer coat that Kris’s soldiers had kept for her. There was only one way to silence the crowd.
She summoned her power, but not to grow. She understood that there was a phase before she did that, like unsheathing a sword before striking with it. It changed the air around her, made her hair flutter a little. There was a distinct feeling of something profound reverberating all around her, something that would cause goose bumps on each and everyone surrounding her.
They all became silent in an instant.
Her smile grew. She truly was a goddess. The silence reigned for a few moments as she withdrew her power, then people started to kneel down. Maia blushed at that. And she liked it too.
“Maia, “ Kris said. She turned her head, but he seemed to not know what to say to her.
“Yes?”
He looked at her a few more moments, then spoke, “Who are you?”
Good question. She drew in a deep breath. “I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?”
“I don’t know that either.”
Someone from the crowd shouted, “You are our savior! You are here to avenge us!”
“No.” Maia said softly, but everyone seemed to hear it. “I don’t owe you anything.”
Her words seemed to freeze everyone cold. She knew those were not the words they expected. But that’s how she felt. There was a bigger purpose to her, she knew, and it was not to become a weapon in a pathetic war. Savior? Angel? Protector? It seemed so silly to her.
“What do you mean?” Kris said. “Of course you don’t owe us anything, but-”
“What?” She turned at him. “You are going to rally behind me? You want me to destroy them? You expect me to save you because my hair is red? I’m not the answer to your prayers.”
“But-”
“There’s no but. There is no difference between you and them but some pigment on your hair. On the other hand, there is a difference between you and me.”
Complete silence reigned after her words. Events beyond everyone’s imagination had played out right in front of them, yet they turned to be anything but what they expected. Maia could see the growing fear in their eyes. It made her feel great.
“Maia,” Kris looked at her, his face turning into utter disappointment. “You’ve been with us for so long. We found you on the streets for heaven’s sake! You ate with us, drank with us, slept with us. Why did you hide your nature for so long? Why are you being so cold? Are you playing with us?”
Yes. Why was she doing this? It made no sense to her. This wasn’t her. But there was no denying it. Within herself, her emotions played out entirely different to what she expected. Everything had changed for her, she simply didn’t care about Kris and all the others anymore. She couldn’t bother to listen to them anymore. What was happening to her?
Kris put a hand on her shoulder. She drew her power, causing everyone to flinch backwards. The other soldiers hoisted their guns, pointing at her. Somehow, she knew she wouldn’t need to care about it either. They were harmless to her. She then raised her hand and pushed Kris’ hand from her shoulder, looking at him.
“I’m sorry.” She said. She needed to get out of here. She still felt enough compassion for the people around her, but she feared she might do something unforgivable. She was still human enough to understand that. “I’m going away. I… I’m going to reshape this world, for better or worse. Maybe one day I’ll come back for you. But I need time. I’m sorry. There are too many things that I need to understand first.”
She then walked away with everyone staring at her, crushing disappointment in each of their eyes. Maia had to hold herself back. It felt like they were disrespecting her, like they expected something from her when in fact she felt compelled to crush everyone beneath her feet.
What’s happening to me?
---
“That’s a drastic change.” Matthew said.
“It changes you in ways that are most likely unfathomable to you.” Maia said. “But I think you still do understand.”
“Well, from how I know you, I’m not surprised by your behavior there, but you changed too fast. Might it be that this power of yours corrupts you somehow?”
She smiled. “You tell me.”
Matthew laughed. “Fine. You said it’s unfathomable for me. Then tell me, do you think it was a real change or do you feel that possessing this power of yours surfaced emotions and feelings that were always suppressed because of your status?” He cleared his throat. “Did you become who you are now, or did were you always meant to be like this?”
“That’s an interesting question.” She eyed him for a few moments, then turned her head towards the fire, thoughtful. “I don’t know, not for sure. I feel that I’ve always been this… goddess. It may be a little bit of both, but deep down inside, I think- no, I knowthat I’ve been born into this vessel without any way of knowing who or what I truly was, and that I’d have had to discover my potential. And I think that… I’m special, so to say. On a level that ordinary people cannot understand. I’m more than them, than you, not in just the ways that are visible, tangible. The proverbial light behind my eyes is different, more powerful than that of ordinary people.”
Matthew remained silent for a moment, and then snorted. She turned and eyed him, their seriousness like an order to explain himself to her.
“You want me to be honest.” He said. “I’ll be honest. That’s rich, and arrogant.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Arrogance implies an exaggeration of one’s importance or abilities. I’m not exaggerating.”
She was right, Matthew realized. But still, “Come on. You think your… soul, is different?”
“Yes.” She said. “I think you’ll understand better when I get to finish my story.”
“Uhm, ok. I too think it would be best if you continued.” He shifted from his sitting position a little bit to face her better. “So you walked away. Where to?”
“Well, I strode aimlessly for a while, thinking. I knew that The Sovereign would never accept meeting me, and I wanted to meet him so I could find the blonde woman. I needed answers. Then I realized that he didn’t want to meet this giant woman, not me. He didn’t know the giantess was me. I didn’t know what happened to Syl at that time, but I was sure he would’ve wanted to listen to me.”
“Ah.” Matthew understood. “Let me guess, you let yourself get captured.”
She smiled once again.
---
Maia woke to the sound of metal grinding against metal. She felt the forward motion that came with the stopping of the train as it was breaking, adjusting for it on the wooden platform where she sat, imprisoned. Her arms and legs itched on the spots where she was bound, fighting the urge to grow out of them.
For two days she had been traveling as a prisoner on the train. At first, her captors, a reconnaissance unit, wanted to kill her on the spot. She had needed a lot of convincing to do before they agreed to check her story out. Knowing their language had helped a lot. She wasn’t sure she’d be meeting him afterwards, but she wanted to try a more subtle approach first rather than scare him into permanent hiding.
Maia heard the footsteps of people approaching, the usual guards that would give her some food and let her outside her wooden prison inside one of the train’s wagons. But then she noticed the missing background noise. They usually stopped at stations with an array of sounds and chatter all around the train, but she was sure they must have stopped in the middle of nowhere. The only thing she could hear was a fizzle of raindrops on the roof of the wagon.
Then, light flooded the inside of the wagon as they opened the door. Two of them stepped inside and released her from her cage, dragging her outside. She stepped on the muddy ground and her thoughts were confirmed when she regarded the area around them, a vast clearing surrounded by a forest, with no trace of a city or village nearby. She was going to meet him, for sure.
It wasn’t long before The Sovereign’s car arrived. An elegant machine surrounded by heavier pieces of armored ones that escorted it. He felt safe, she thought, and a wicked smile formed on her face that she had trouble suppressing.
The car stopped in front of them. A guard moved and opened the car’s rear door and readied an umbrella. The one-armed man stepped outside a moment later. Maia had met him on several occasions, and his imposing figure in military uniform never failed to impress her. But this time, she felt no anxiety, no fear at all.
She had witnessed a similar scene many times with Syl. A bunch of arrogant men in their imposing military uniforms with rifles and all that came with it, surrounding redheads, humiliating them, torturing them and murdering them. Maia felt a wave of euphoria rush through her veins as The Sovereign approached her, knowing that him and all these men were already dead at the hands of this meekly, dirt-covered, unsuspecting little girl.
“It’s really you.” The Sovereign said with his usual flat tone as he stopped right in front of her, a hint of shock forming on his expression. “Where is my daughter? Where is my heir!”
Heir? Maia didn’t know that. Never thought about it actually. “Dead, I think.”
She could see the anger on his face immediately, then felt the burning sensation on her cheek as she slapped him. “You dare speak to me like that?”
She turned her face, slowly, back towards his, smiling all the way. “What do you think happened back there, Sovereign?”
He frowned, but said nothing. She could see his thoughts mirrored in his face plain as day. First it was confusion, followed by understanding, then realization, and finally, full-blown shock. “Kill her. Now!” He screamed.
Maia gave them no chance. She exploded instantly.
Her first thought afterwards was the haze of raindrops that surrounded her. It was like a never-ending, wet blanket of fog to her. When she moved her arms, they carried the drops with them on river-like streams along her skin, leaving huge gaps of empty space trailing them and swirling the rain all around them. The physics at play never ceased to amaze her.
She looked down at her feet with a growing smile.
She confirmed what she suspected for a while. She literally grew. Although it was difficult for her to sense it in the process, she knew she didn’t just pop in her gigantic form, but her body gained mass and pushed everything aside in her vicinity.
The men were sprawled on the ground all around her feet, startled. Her heels had pushed a few of the train’s wagons out of their tracks. And the soft ground had yielded a few feet to her weight. But The Sovereign looked well. He had stood right in front of her before, and consequently found himself right between her feet afterwards. He must have jerked backwards and fallen in surprise, since he was looking at her with such terror in his expression that convinced Maia that the past two days had been entirely worth it.
She crouched down, and everyone started moving, screaming, and fleeing. The Sovereign crawled backwards, which amused her before she picked him up with uttermost care. She didn’t want to accidentally break him, remembering how fragile their bodies were on her scale.
She slowly lifted him up and placed his terrified form on the palm of her hand, smiling down at him. “Hi!”
“Y- You can’t be real!” He screamed.
She lowered her hand abruptly, a dozen feet to his perspective. His body followed it shortly after, causing him to slam against her skin, face-first. “Real enough?”
“Who are you?” He said after regaining his bearings.
“Good question.” Her voice seemed to shake his entire body. Indeed, it was a good question, one for which she had sought him for. She didn’t know, and she wanted answers. “But first,” she said as her fingers closed all around him, “I have to take care of the little pests at my feet.”
Most were already running away, their speed too feeble for her. She first concentrated on the vehicles that tried to get away. She put a foot above one of them and applied some pressure, breaking its caroserie in several places and destroying its drive wheel. She wanted those inside alive.
Two remaining ones she nudged on their sides, sending them flying sideways, rolling around, sprawling some of their living contents out. It caused her to giggle as she moved her attention to those fleeing on foot. Moving her other foot, she hovered it upon a dense spot, inadvertently shielding them from the rain. Maia enjoyed the terror she induced when they turned to see the massive, mud-covered sole looming above them. The power over life and death she possessed thrilled her to no end. She still didn’t know why, deciding that particular quest for understanding to be something for the future.
She planted her foot down on top of them, carefully. The rain-soaked ground allowed her more leeway with the pressure she applied, shoving their little, wriggling bodies into the mud. That’s where they belonged, she thought. Right beneath her feet, eating wet dirt. She was literally above them. Their lives belonged to her. She could decide to do whatever she wanted with them. And she wanted them dead.
But not an easy one. Instead of letting her full weight rest on top of them, she dragged her foot on the mud, rolling their bodies along like a master of puppets, having no choice but to obey her whims. She felt little snaps, like stepping on dry leaves, and limbs dragged along in ways that made even her shiver slightly. But at the same time, she enjoyed it too much.
Then she removed her foot and observed her work. They immediately started crawling, reminiscent of worms forced on the surface after tilling the soil. Maia crouched down to observe them more directly. She wanted to tell herself that she was doing this because that’s what they deserved, because they were darkhaired. But it didn’t feel that way.
She moved a finger and pressed one of them with it, shoving his face on a pool of muddy water and keeping him like that. She really wanted to believe that she was what the people back in that town called her: a savior, but she knew she wasn’t. Somehow, she knew there was an underlying reason why this was all happening, her and the war included. A reason that outgrew everything that had happened in the history of her entire world. And she knew the golden-haired woman was at the center of it all. But how?That’s what Maia wanted to know. That woman obviously knew what Maia was capable of.
Sighing, she applied more pressure on the weakening form beneath her finger, breaking the man apart with ease. The others tried to crawl away with renewed vigor. She observed them a little more, her hand meanwhile straying around, causing hurricane-like winds that swept all the other fleeing ones along. She also needed to understand why she was feeling this warmth that swept all along her body, especially between her legs. Why did killing these bugs feel so wonderful?
Sighing once more, she rose up again and put the rest out of their misery with a stomp.
Her focus then shifted to the others. She concentrated on the injured ones coming out of the vehicles, tapping them with her big toe, each tap causing agonizing screams to erupt from them. She thought to ask them how it felt like being played around like toys, but found she couldn’t bother.
Her games then grew more violent. She kicked a few getting close to the tree line, sending them flying hundreds of yards through the air. Some even broke apart mid air. The others she crushed in various ways. Fast and slow, stomping on some then deliberately smearing others. A couple she popped between her toes, and one had the unfortunate luck of being cut in half by her nail. All the time, Maia wondered why she left no compassion at all for them, even if they were darkhaired. They were humans in the end, and there were always bound to be innocents even between soldiers. But no, not a speck of care within her, only playful lust.
After some time, she noticed the train beginning to move. She hadn’t seen one of them cutting off the detracked wagons, but she still giggled at their foolishness by attempting to get away on a train. They should have just stayed hidden.
She grabbed the train with her free hand and slowly lifted it. Remarkably, the links between the wagons held and she could lift it even though it was still heavy. Bits and pieces of whatever the train was transporting began to fall from the wagons. Raw resources, pieces of machinery, humans. She ignored it all. Instead, after lifting it and holding it steady for a few moments, she began to swing it like a pendulum. Only, she increased the force with each swing.
Then, after having created enough momentum, she swung it all around like playing with a piece of rope. It still held, amazingly. She put even more force on the swing, and the weakest link broke apart on the second rotation while traveling upwards.
Half a dozen wagons and the front engine of the train rotated wildly in mid air for a few moments before each one twisted and turned sharply against the others, causing the whole line to violently break apart above her, spending bits and pieces of shredded metal flying everywhere. Then the wagons followed, falling on all directions like the aftermath of a firework. With an open mouth, Maia watched her work, loving the level of destruction she could cause with such mundane acts.
The rest of the train followed in similar fashion as she released it in mid rotation.
She lingered for a while, watching the death and destruction she had caused in a short amount of time. Afterwards, she crouched down and released her prisoner, perching him atop one of the train’s wrecked wagons where he had a perfect point of view for the carnage that Maia created.
She watched as The Sovereign regarded his surroundings with complete shock and fear in his face. He turned to look at Maia’s looming form that shadowed him from the rain that was getting heavier.
Maia pointed a finger at him, a threat. “Where is the golden-haired woman?”
He said nothing, but the look in his face was plain.
“You don’t know, do you?”
The Sovereign gritted his teeth. It was fascinating to see such a powerful man rendered so useless, Maia thought. He didn’t know what to do, didn’t know how to act. He was faced with a goddess, a redhaired one, and she was the end of him. It amused her to see the disbelief in his expression.
“Just tell me this, “ Maia said. “And I’ll be quick. Why did she help you? How did she do it?”
He remained silent at first, but Maia could see the gathering thoughts of his mind. Then he finally spoke, “I don’t know why. I only know that she’s omniscient.”
Maia frowned, but said nothing. She thought for a few moments, then picked him up and rose back up. “Omniscient, huh.” She said, but not really to him or anyone in particular. “It can’t be. Or else, she would have found me immediately. Either way, I’ll find her, eventually. I’ll be hardly inconspicuous now.”
The she looked at The Sovereign one last time. A man she had thought incapable of fear in the past. His expression screamed terror, and it made her smile. She could see Sylisia’s features in him, the same eyes, the same mouth. It sent a shiver down her spine, remembering the months she spend as her sex slave. It was only fitting that her father would end the same way.
Lowering him down between her legs, she slid him between the folds of her sex, and pushed his scrambling form against her clitoris with her index finger. She felt the tingling sensation, and shot her head up with eyes wide open.
Her legs trembled, making it difficult for her to stay balanced. Her breathing got caught at first, then paced as further jolts of never-ending electrical pulses shot from in between her legs like fireworks. She thought she would crush him, unable to hold it back, and moved to push the folds of her outer labia with her thumb and middle finger together, burying him within.
His struggles grew smothered, controlled. Maia stopped to think about it, to really grasp the meaning of what she was doing. She had buried a full grown man, the most powerful one in the world at that, within her most intimate flesh. She had control over him that Syl could’ve only dreamt of. Her smile grew broad as she moaned, dropping to her knees.
She concentrated, pinning him further. She felt his every movement, the warmth of the tiny speck, sensed emotions that raged within his mind, the humiliation that she was putting him through. She tried to hold on to her state of mind for a bit longer, but recognized when the time had come. She pushed the folds of her sex forcefully, feeling his little body break in a thousand places.
In an instant, her orgasm came.
She dropped forward, falling on the muddy surface, panting. She released her little spent sex slave, uncaring for what had become of him. Her mind delved into a haze, slowly slipping into a dream, unable to fight the urge and tiredness.
Whens he woke, the rain had stopped, and she was back on her normal size. She rose up immediately, regarding the chaos that surrounded her. It left a much bigger impact when she witnessed it on her normal size.
Her hand slipped between the nakedness of her thighs, feeling around. She had really done it, but there was no body. Her eyes then wandered further down the field and spotted the remains that she recognized. It was the best feeling she had ever experienced. And she wanted more.