A commission from  Panther1945 , third and last of a series a series. Amid the ruins of their home, Ishmael and his sister attempt to flee the giantess who is showing them very personal attention.

The entire 9,000+ word story cannot fit in the space provided below. Please download the PDF to enjoy the full tale.

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From miles up in the air, crouching Aurora regarded a clear footprint she had left not long ago. The whole shape had filled with shining salt-water. The impressions of her claws, toes, ball and heel stood out dark and proud and red from the human paste that had been pressed into them. And so too did the brightly dressed corpses of the bodies that were just now bobbing to the surface. For no one had survived this footfall. Those ‘fortunate’ enough to meet the arch of her foot were simply killed an instant later as her foot sank down.

“How was it for you, hmm?” she wondered aloud. “To see your fellows at your front and back crushed and know the same was coming for you? To feel the earth beneath you have up and bring you to me even faster?”

She shuddered at the thought of being so small, weak, and worthless as to deserve such a fate as was now being delivered onto the inhabitants of this world. Of being as insignificant as an ant. Pushing that disgusting notion from her mind, she regarded the beautiful contrast of her watery footprint against the crumpled mesh of wood and stone and earth all about it. So lovely a sight. And yet, so much smaller than the ones she would yet create with the feet she wielded now.

The indentation, made before her latest growth spurt, measured just over half the length of her hand as it had become. Somewhere along that footprint, according to her artificial assistant, lay the wreckage of a gilded barge no longer than her pinkie claw. “Where is it?” she asked, impatience deepening her voice even further. “I can’t tell one bit of garbage from another!”

“I’m afraid that, in your haste, you overstepped it slightly.” Once more, her floating servant provided visual clues. This time, there were arrows pointing straight down. These led to a series of markers, question marks rather than triangles, which orbited a space near the bottom of her heel. She focused her vision upon the space, but even with the aid of her omnicle’s maximum magnification mode she was unable to locate the tiny treasure. There was just too much debris in the way. But she could always pan for the gold…

“I’ll just have to sort it by hand.” She brought her hand all the way down to claim everything around the ship.

. . .

Ishmael’s eyes didn’t want to comprehend the sheer size of the entity before and above him. He could not see all of her clearly, only parts at a time. There was a hungry look in her eyes. Her fangs shone brightly, glazed by the spit of a wiggling tongue. The great green beast couldn’t possibly see the children, could she?

Ishmael’s illusions of going unnoticed crumbled when the great green hand came down, down, down until he could see nothing but black. Black, and a tiny red light that came rushing past him, almost alive in its drive to escape encapsulation. But the boy stood there, blood rushing from his face. Unable to do anything but scream. And his sister joined him in it.

The sounds that followed rattled Ishmael’s spine. A tear in the world. A thing of deep thunder and high-pitched screeches rolled into one impossible groan. As though the living heart of the city were being plucked out from its broken chest. The earth revolted against the assault, sending of earth-tremors loud and violent enough to drown out the cries of two terrified children.

The spell passed, and the darkness faded into sunlight. In its wake, the water at his feet drained away. Rushing towards a pair of rough-walled ravines to either side of him.

. . .

Aurora’s claws scraped bedrock; a most satisfying means of ‘quantifying’ her greatness. Not with mind-bending numbers, but with sheer sensation! She dislodged an immeasurable amount of earth and debris, nearly erasing the entire footprint. Leaving behind a five-fingered hole which began drinking in the nearby waters.

She stood tall and eager as the day she first cheated her sister out of a week’s allowance. With great care, she started fishing her index claw through the sloppy goo. Letting unimportant things fall away to the ground far below. Once she’d identified what she was looking for, she dragged it to the center of her palm.

The keel had been cracked clean through, either by the crash or her retrieval. It mattered not which. It lay before her appraising eyes flat as a spatchcocked game hen ripe for the devouring. It might have been a proud vessel once, for one built by primitives. With little rows for oars, and a large structure in back for papering someone important. The piece might have looked good floating in the pond of her favorite manor house, were she to put in the effort of having it restored.

‘If not for the incriminating nature of its very existence, I may well have done.’

She blew onto it, in order to try to coax out the gleam of the gold she’d been promised. What structural integrity the wreck had left abandoned it under the force of her breath. But she saw that precious, intoxicating color shining through in minute streaks. “Ha ha ha! Whatever shall I do with all these lovely little shields, hmm? Line the interior of my personal pool in my spa’s lodge, perhaps?”

EDO chose this moment to make known a bit of news. “I may interest you to know, Madam, that we are not alone.”

“Is that so?” The Lady’s tone was playful. She popped a jeweller’s lens into one eye. All the better to see the dead vessel with. “Are you telling me I have more work to do?”

“There are two living humans nearabout. They are making quite the fuss.” Aurora’s omnicle blinked to Archival View, and displayed a looping animation: a closeup of two screaming children, pale-face and tear stricken, captured as Drone 339-MK zipped clear of her hands not a moment ago.

The glass’s holographic patina then switched to Live-stream. 339-MK was now observing the children from above. The younger one eliciting a mewling moan, and the older trying in vane to mollify them. 

“Chellah! Please just listen to me! Look up! She’s focused on something else. We can still get out of here/ We just have t go… That way! Just stand up, pretty please.”

“Biometric scans conform the speaker is that same child as you encountered in the jungle clearing.”

“What?” That got Aurora’s full attention. She retrieved the bag where she’d been holding her ‘giant’ gems, and artlessly shoved the ship in. Mud and all. ” Show me.” The ghostly triangles came as they had before, leading her eye to the space right beside the now-completely-flooded handprint.

. . .

Ishmael’s calls to rouse his sister into action were cut short by deadly rain; more of Huitz Thom falling from the monster’s hand. Each piece crashed into the earth with tremendous force that he could compare only to the cannon fire he’d heard earlier. She was placing something into a pouch at her hip. And scanning the ground for something else.

He could see her lips moving ahead of the thunder of her words: “What? Show me. Or sh’vaccht me. Whatever.”

Ishmael picked his sister up and started to struggle away. He didn’t get far before something rushed forth to block his path. “Eeek!” It was small and round and decorated in strange symbols, with one eye that glowed an evil green. It was smaller than the other one he’d seen in the forest; barely larger than his own fist but no less eerie for the unnatural way it hovered in the air. A soft sound, less than a whisper, came from the strange metallic lines along its bottom half.

Her voice came from the sky. “So, young pest, what do you think of my redecoration efforts?”

The boy’s feet turned lead. He could imagine those evil diamond eyes looking dead at him. He looked up, and only somewhat backwards, and saw that this was indeed the case. The killer of a civilization had him personally in her sights. All he could do in that moment was shudder.

A warbling drone drew his attention slightly leftward and high above, in line with the monster’s knee. The ball-shaped thing that he’d seen in the forest. The one roughly as large as his head. Were these things her fellow demons? Corrupted insects? Some other horror he couldn’t even begin to understand? The mystery of them only made him feel more untethered from the world he had known just hours ago.

He tried to remove the fear from his voice, and failed. “Y-you destroyed everything. The entire city. There’s nothing left.”

. . .

Aurora's laugh was a predatory one. "As I am going do to your entire world. After I’ve dealt with you.” The Lady shifted the foot which had bisected the barrier wall. Bulldozing tons more of it in and instant. She could hear the desolation roar through EDO's microphones. Hear her victim struggling to stay upright. Hear the shrieking of the other mouth.

The droid chose that moment to interject. "That would be a smaller female of the species. It would require more invasive analysis to confirm, but it is reasonable to assume these two are related in some way. Why else would he follow you here?" The boy neither confirmed nor denied the matter. For he could not hear it; EDO was speaking directly into his mistress' ears via wireless. "You could let them live? Add them to your menagerie on Vaxis Major? I only mention the potential relation as it would tend to preclude them from being used as a breeding pair."

One sentence suited both conversations: "I am not feeling merciful."

"Why are you doing this?" Terror raised the boy's voice a couple octaves higher.

She lowered hers even more. In the hope it would vibrate his bones. Drive the surety of her triumph into his every cell. "Because I can. Because it’s my right. I own this world now, and I shall do as I please with it."

"No one owns the Gods!" The sightless voice shot back. "They will stop you!"

"Gods? Deities are but ideas. Fictions. These things may be copyrighted." It delighted Aurora no end to crush a child's final hope. "Whatever figments you worship, I now own them too. And they will service me. I am invincible."

Hope must have fled, indeed. For even the girl stopped making noise. EDO’s proxy helpfully hovered closer to the pair, that she might hear their panicked breathing, see the sweat rain from their faces, and be informed of fluttering heart-rates. The collapse of a second world, the supernatural one, had left them in shock.

When the boy did speak, it was with a defeated monotone. "Just let us go. Please. We'll find a place far away from you. You'll never be bothered by us again."

Aurora had all that she wanted from him now. He had no further use to her. "I do not negotiate with specs of dust that could not inconvenience an insect. I crush them!" Aurora rose her foot high. Higher than any building those two backwater brats had ever dreamed of seeing.

. . .

Once again the sunlight was blotted away. The darkness was a foot promising two grisly ends.

Chellah shrieked again, squirming to be free. Her helpless legs pumping a sprint.

Ishmael let her to the ground. “Run, run, run!”

Run they did. Fighting the wind that wanted to pull them backwards. Leaping over debris and dodging dead bodies with near-superhuman grace. Time seemed oddly still; Ishmael was living long moments between heartbeats. Plenty of time to adapt to every obstacle as the darkness closed in. Smothering the horizon. The sensation ended when the Chellah’s cloak caught her left leg. She tripped sideways, headed towards one of the water-logged gouges the monster had torn through the land.

He caught her with both hands, and they both plunged into the unnatural canal. The cold and wet snared them in its cruel embrace, and the darkness took them all. Unimaginable force pushed him down, down, deep into the dingy brine. Wrenching his arms upwards by the sheer force of his motion through the water. Then into a sideways tumble as some force overtook him. He could feel his sister struggling against the cloak one moment, and then could not feel her at all the next. He tried to reach for her, but could not. He gave up precious bubbles of air screaming her name.

The rumble of an elephant stampede pounded his ears and skin and heart and bones, and his body began rushing upwards. Blackness was everywhere. Stars burst into view, pinpricks of light in all colors, but he was still in the water. Still moving upwards. His arms and legs trailing behind his limp torso. His lungs ached. His heart wept. Needles invaded his hands and feet.

The world passed into blackness once more.


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