As the the universe blueshifts back into the visible range I can suddenly see our mark. A tiny globe, which looks quite a bit like Earth, orbiting a beautiful blue star.

I take a look at the scans, and it seems odd, the planet registers very little gravity, and seems farther away then it should. Padding through some of our previous scans, I find the Sol system for reference.

I take another look at the scans as I compare this world to Earth. "Violet, this planet is tiny, it's smaller then Earth's moon!" I lightly giggle, drawing a similar sound from Violet.

She takes her own look, "Well, it's not very dense, the terrain is relatively tiny too...

Looking back to the table with the jar of men, I laugh, "Could this be where our captive men are from?"

Violet smiles, "I'm not sure, but with all the trouble they have been, we can probably just drop them off here and be done with them."

I laugh, "I'm not arguing with that."

Violet pilots us into the planet's gravity well, we rotate to match the gravity of the planet and dip into the thin atmosphere. I watch my screens for signs of life. I don't really see anything, this planet is barren. Giving up on finding civilization, I turn my attention to the coordinates we got from Violet's previous research which point to a location along the equator. I highlight the spot and project it on Violet's navigation controls. "You could land here, seems barren enough."

"I can't though, the scans show significant surface fracturing, I'm not sure what it is, but I'm not putting a landing strut there."

"Well, what do you suggest?" I ask, continuing to look around.

"That valley looks stable enough, but this planet is fragile..."

I laugh, "You aren't kidding, the atmosphere only really extends 45 meters from the surface, and the mountains... appear to be shoulder height!" I get out of my chair, excited to see the new planet. I lean over to kiss Violet while I spin about and head to the armory.

I pull my suit down from its hanger, sifting through the pieces and slipping into the leggings. I had the legs zipped in when Violet entered the room.

She leaned on the wall, "Eager?" she asked.

"I want to see these mountains, the peaks are only 12 meters high, but they look like full sized mountains!"

Violet smiled, and grabbed her armor and the blue plating sitting beside it. As she donned the outfit she continued staring at me. I noticed her eyes as I continued dressing, and upon finishing with the top of the suit, I skirted around Violet, narrowly evading her playful punch.

Exiting the room I grab my helmet, because the atmosphere of this planet is unfortunately rather thin at my height. I look out the window, and see nothing of note, the ground is green, but I cannot make out grass blades, or anything recognizable. Just then I receive the playful punch I missed earlier. "Ouch." I rub my side, exaggerating the pain. as Violet hugs me from behind.

"Okay, I don't know anything about this world Alice... so be careful, and follow my lead." she reaches up and over me to decompress the airlock and open the door to the outside world.

The first thing I notice is that is that it is incredibly quiet. I watch as Violet steps off the platform onto the surface, the green surface erupts around her foot like it was a pile of loose dust. The cloud mushrooms out and flattens along the surface, disappearing almost as quickly as it had appeared. Incredible.

When she lifted her foot nothing remained of the green landscape, it was just brown... gone.

I shrug, because this moss must be pretty pathetic to be destroyed underfoot like that.

I follow Violet over to the side of the mountains, standing here on this planet, next to these shoulder height mountains feels surreal. Almost impossible, I place my hand on the peak of a particularly tall mountain, and take in the moment... I am here, thousands of light years from home, standing on a world that is so small, the mountains cannot match my height. I feel powerful, strong, almost invincible. Then I feel a warm presence pressing down on my hand. Opening my eyes I see Violet's gloved hand squeezing my hand, caressing it softly.

She looks at me cautiously, "Alice, are you okay?"

I smile and breath out heavily, "Yeah, just taking in the moment... I feel incredible standing over these mountains."

She smiles, laughing lightly, "You don't need to stand over mountains to be incredible... you are always incredible."

I pull my hand away, smiling, and blushing... I pull out a scanner, I continue walking toward the signal, when I notice the fragmentation Violet was talking about.

As I am about to step into it, Violet pulls me back. She laughs, "One of the rules of exploration, when you don't know what's happening, look first."

Violet rests her hands on my hips and guides me to my knees, she settles down beside me on the edge of the strange fragmentation, leaning down, I get my head a couple inches from the ground. I squint my eyes to focus as best I can, and I can see skyscrapers.

"Holy shit." I mutter.

Violet laughs lightly, "See why it was best not to step first?"

I place my scanner close and magnify the streets below. I can now see the microbes... the tiny people living in this microscopic city, they are walking about their daily lives, apparently unaware of two enormous women looking down on them. With some proper measuring I realize just how tiny they are. Their buildings soar into the sky relative to them, the tallest reaching a little more then half a centimeter. Which makes the tinies below close to sixteen micrometers tall. So small... insignificant.

I stand back up and turn to Violet, "Well we can't drop off our tiny prisoners here... they would be giants."

Violet just nods knowingly, "We'll find a place for out little idiots, just not here." Violet's hands rest on my shoulders. Her warm breath on my ear as she whispers, "If we are going to find the source of the signal, we might need to shrink down."

My eyes widen as I turn back to Violet, "That small?"

Her smile was contagious, "Sounds exciting right?"

I look back to the micro-city, "I'm not sure I want to be that small..." I continue thinking about it, these buildings are smaller then the components of electronics I was the QC agent for on Earth. The people are almost the size of cells. I have become quite fond of my 15 meter height... shrinking down seems like going backward.

Suddenly I feel the inverse of the feeling of growth, like power is being pulled out of my soul. I curl in on myself, I hate this feeling, I don't like being smaller. I am on the verge of tears as two strong arms wrap around my dwindling body. Violet pulls me into her grip, as she bites my neck... her warm tongue running down my neck and over my shoulder.

The rapturous feeling of intimacy washes over me, distracting me from the rapid shrinking I am experiencing. The buildings of the city go from miniature fragments, imperceptible to my eyes, to the appearance of a map, to a skyline before me, to an intimidating wall of structures, towering over my miniature body.

We are suddenly standing in a barren wasteland. Hundreds of feet away from a forest. In the other direction... the wasteland extends out to the horizon. "What the hell happened here?"

Violet laughs, "You stepped on the forest sweetie. That's what happened."

I think about it for a moment, until my jaw drops when I realize how powerful my steps had been. I look down at my tiny feet. "Well they won't be doing that at this size..."

Violet unclasps my helmet, pulling it off and clipping it on my belt, once she removes her own, she parts from me with a nuzzle as she pulls me toward the forest so we can enter the city. As we walk into the city borders we are still in the process of shrinking. We are still about 10 stories high. I walk behind Violet along the street. The people on the sidewalks don't acknowledge us.

Very strange. If I was them I would be staring at the women whose feet fill the streets.

Once we are small enough that we can walk side by side, Violet drops back, wrapping her arm around my waist, "I've got a path to the signal now, we'll just have to walk to the center of the city."

"Alright, any idea how far?"

She laughs, "About the length of my finger?"

"10 kilometers?!"

We both giggle as we finally reach the height of the people of the city. Looking around as we walk I hear the light murmur of many conversations, and my translator seems to be working on the language. I tap the device, and Violet chimes in, "It's never heard there language before, give it a minute." I nod my head realizing that a language is a pretty complicated thing, when I notice something... peculiar.

The side of the street we are walking on is occupied with women. Only women. The far side is occupied with only men. I can only wonder why, when I notice a train station which seems to head for the center of town. "Hey look, we could probably take that train!"

"Good idea!" Violet yells, as she grabs my arm and pulls me straight to the train. She hops on as the train starts moving, but I have to run a little to get aboard. I bump a lot of people in the process, but no one seems to mind.

When I sit down on a bench in the back of the train, Violet joins me, cuddling herself into me. She is so warm, and my heart flutters with joy.

I watch as a woman walks through the aisle, looking for a seat, her brown hair is worn in a long ponytail, and she is wearing a simple red dress which covers her beautifully, revealing as tasteful amount of her chest while flowing down to her knees. She seems frustrated as she looks row by row, until she reaches the bench in front of Violet and I. A woman is sitting next to the window, and a man is sitting as close to the aisle as he can. The woman who was looking for a seat scoots into the seat. The man reacts quickly, trying to stay as far from the women as possible. I find this concerning, and rub Violet's arm and whisper, "Look at this..."

She opens her eyes and sits up, looking at the strange spectacle. The man seems very concerned sitting between these women, which seems odd to me, because where I come from any man would be happy to be in this situation.

Until I notice what is happening to him. Violet nudges me, "He's shrinking."

I watch as he shrinks even further. "I know, I wonder why?" He continues dwindling as the women on his sides watch, with a little concern on their faces. Like they don't mean to do this. The woman who sat down speaks, and my translator picks up the language, buzzing as it processes, and it finally outputs something understandable.

"I'm sorry little one, I needed a seat."

The little guy simply sighs, slumping his shoulders as he shrinks smaller then could possibly be measured in micrometers. She reaches down and picks him up, "I'll take care of you until you grow back." She smiles and the glimpse I get of his face is a contented acceptance of the situation. Something unpleasant but acceptable in their society.

I think it's cute for the women to care for the inadvertently tiny men, it just seems right. Despite the scene before me, it still bothers me that no one seems to take interest in us. We are wearing some seriously different clothes, and for some reason people seem none the wiser to the aliens in the back.

Riding on the train reveals some interesting views, the streets seem to be repeating. Almost like this city is the same city block repeated over and over across the surface of the planet.

I'm not sure what to make of my observations, but I just put it aside, hoping for answers at the signal. I look over at Violet, meeting her eyes, her smile is beautiful, so contagious. I look into her eyes as she give me a soft kiss and rests her head on my shoulder. "Wake me up when we get there."

"Of course I will." I look back out the window as the streets flow steadily past, as we draw closer to the center of the city. I am curious what we will find there, how strange it might be.

The train moves swiftly and I can hear a little of the conversations around me. I come to realize that many of the women on the train are caring for men they've inadvertently miniaturized. Such an awesome thing, on this world, women are so powerful that their mere presence shrinks men to a more appropriate size.

After a few more minutes of the same streets flowing past the train begins to slow as it reaches the center of the city and begins turning to go around a large building. The building is a large dome of some kind. Thousands of people are crowding around the building, walking uniformly in a counterclockwise direction.

I nudge Violet, her head pops up as she looks at the same thing I am. She furrows her brow, "What the hell are they doing?"

I have no answers, I just shrug in response, "I have no idea, it is one of the weirdest things I've ever seen."

When the train comes to a stop, the passengers quickly evacuate the car, naturally we follow, but we are almost run over by the group of people who immediate attempt to refill the train.

Violet points to the central building, "Follow me Alice, don't let go of my hand." Pushing through the crowd of circling people is easy, as we just follow the pattern people are following, occasionally making our way toward then center. When we break through the group and reach the center, there is no one here. The central building is surrounded with a black line, and none of the people have crossed it.

"This is so strange Violet... feels almost wrong."

She looks back at the circling people, "Something is wrong with this city, these people... they don't seem to be real... almost like they are being controlled."

I take her hand, "Come on, lets find out what's going on here, the answer has to be in this building." We walk hand in hand to one of the entrances, no one is guarding it.

As we cautiously pass through the portal, Violet points to the center of the room. "Why is there an enormous statue of a naked woman?"

I roll my eyes, because I obviously don't know. The black statue stands over the room, the head of the woman close to the ceiling. If I were my normal height, I would guess she stands about 100 meters high. Her black marble body has small veins of white crystal running through it, and a single glowing white ring around her feet.

Walking up to the base the white light pulsates as a voice fills the room.

"Life!" she announces, her voice loud, filling the room and echoing powerfully. "There is life here..."

Violet steps forward, "Who are you?"

The voice sounds like she is waking from a deep slumber, with a tinge of what I could only guess is excitement. "I am Vigilance, the guardian of this Sigil-world, and I am so happy to meet you Violet, because you are... alive."

Violet looks to me with confusion, mouthing, "How does she know my name?"

I give her wild eyes to indicate that I have no idea, when I look up to Vigilance as her eyes begin to glow. She makes eye contact with me, I stutter a little as I start to speak, "Mmiss, we don't rrealllyy know why we are here.

Her eyes seem happy as she looks down on me, "You, Alice, are here for the sigil, and forgive me for enjoying this moment, because I have been alone for so long."

"Alone? What about all those people?" Violet pointed out toward the barely visible crowds of people.

Vigilance laughs, "The simulations?" she laughs weakly and sighs, "No they are not real, I made them to try to keep me company over the millennia I have been here alone, protecting the Sigil, allow me to explain."

Suddenly a crack of thunder blazes out, splitting the sky in two, as I am whisked off the ground, floating several meters from the floor, I feel Violet take my hand next to me, as what I can only describe as a vision is imprinted into my mind.

Eons ago... there was the First, they were intelligent, powerful, and beautiful.
They spread across the stars, terraforming worlds, and ordering chaos.
The most beautiful of these worlds were given the gift of intelligence.
A sample of the genes of the First left there to flourish, guiding all life.

For thousands of years the First lead the galaxy, establishing true order.
The leader of the First was considered a Goddess, her power immense.
She could control life, control mass, and guide thought, she was perfection.
Until the night of darkening. When the worlds conspired against her.

She was trapped, held captive, her power split and left on three minor worlds.
The First civilization was lost when a power of light split the galaxy, leaving nothing.
The sigil-worlds have waited for these eons to restore the power of the great one.
The beauty of the galaxy, there for all to see, in the very core.

Even now the power of the First is under attack, on another sigil-world.
The sigil of growth is in the hands of one who desires power and control.


In the last moments of the second vision I saw his face, and heard an angry growl from Violet. "Richar..."

I look over to my girlfriend, "Who?"

Her hands balled into fists, she gritted her teeth. "Richar, the bastard who has opposed my work for years. He steals my research, goes to the places I plan to go to, stealing the things I rightfully discover... dammit!"

"Violet, how the hell could he know about these sigil-worlds?"

"Dammit, I knew it... remember that computer glitch in Professor Duval's classroom? That must have been Richar, stealing more of my work, and this time... he might be able to do some serious damage."

Judging by what Vigilance had shared about the power of the sigils, I have to agree with Violet. Damn men.

"This Richar is dangerous with the sigil, if you will work to stop this man, I will give you the sigil freely, just understand that without the power of the leader, it cannot be truly controlled."

I look up to Vigilance, "What do you mean? Why can't it be controlled?"

She smiles down on me, "I cannot explain that, but look at the simulated women... they aren't even real and they exhibit the inability to control the sigil."

My eyes widen. This sigil is powerful.

"I will retrieve the sigil, hopefully you think quickly."

In a flash Vigilance was gone. I turn to Violet whose eyes were open wide, "What does she mean, 'think quickly?'"

Violet runs past me, and I follow her to the exit and what we encounter is beyond imagination... Vigilance is kneeling over the city, standing at our normal height. When she drops her hand on the northern part of the city. She begins sliding her hand southward, annihilating the city with one pass of her tremendous hand.

Violet's eyes reflect the fear I suddenly feel, as she activates her radio, "ED, SCALE TO DOT ZERO ZERO ZERO ONE PERCENT OF STANDARD AND PILOT TO ME IMMEDIATELY!"

Vigilance's hand grows closer, the rumble of annihilation drawing nearer and nearer! Her pure black hand destroying everything in its path. First it fills the distant corner of the city but in moments her hand towers over us, soaring what appears to be kilometers into the sky.

Crushing more and more of the simulated city, I fear that the Arrow may not arrive in time, when there is a small glimmer of light against the endless black wall of Vigilance's hand, a small streak of silver which pilots with accuracy only an AI could manage. The hatch opens and I run and jump into the ship. Once I am within the gravity field of the Arrow I spin about to help Violet in as Vigilance's hand impacts the central building, throwing the arrow meters into the air and launching Violet over the hatch.

I grab Violet's legs and pull her in as quickly as I can. I grab the hatch handle, slamming it closed, I yell, "ED GET US OUT OF HERE."

"I cannot plot a safe path."

"TAKE ANY PATH DAMMIT, JUST GO!"

The Arrow lurches into motion as I run to the cockpit. I jump in my seat just as the Arrow emerges over Vigilance's hand.

Vigilance's hand begins pushing into the ground, into the remains of the city, her fingers appear to wiggle and push further and further in.

Frustrated with what she did, I quickly navigate the menus to the scaling menu and set the Arrow to return us to our normal size. As the feeling of power eases back into my body I return to the hatch where Violet is curled up by the door.

I sit down by her, and hold her, "It's okay Vi... I'm here."

She breathes heavily for a few moments, before gently turning and making eye contact. "You saved my life."

I grab her, "Of course I did, I don't know what I would do without you... I don't know how I ever lived without you."

She pulls away and runs her left hand through my hair, "You were fine without me... you are stronger then you know."

"Well, I might be strong, but I have a few words for Miss Vigilance." I hand Violet her helmet, stand up and grab my helmet, once I have it secured, I pop the hatch, storming out the door to the marble woman leaning over the remains of the city. She is pulling a light blue sphere out of the ground.

"Dammit Vigilance, you almost killed me! You very nearly killed my girlfriend and almost destroyed our ship!

She looks over calmly, unfazed by my outburst. "You seem fine. Violet is alive, and the ship appears undamaged." She holds the light blue sphere up, "This is the sigil, please protect it."

She drops it into my hand.

"Take it and go to the third sigil world, get the sigil and save the other from the man Richar."

I just blink, realizing just how... single minded she is.

She turns and sits down, suddenly becoming motionless.

I stand there for the longest time. Just looking at this sigil I have been entrusted with.

Violet pulls me back, "Come on big girl, we need to get to the other sigil-world."

I follow her back to the ship. "You're right Violet, and Vigilance was right, Richar is dangerous with the sigil... let's go get it."

She pats my shoulder as we climb up into the ship.