The hills south of Norton had long been known as a place where all manner of dark and devious forces gathered—witches and cultists and the creatures they dealt with, ghosts and monsters and demons, and things older and greater than they.
Despite their dark brown robes bought only a fortnight ago—thick woolen things as good for concealment as for protection against the chill night air—the dozen bodies gathered there tonight didn't number among any of those groups, but it was precisely those stories which had inspired them to carry out their purpose here.
It was a full moon night, a night when any manner of unworldly things could be coaxed to manifest on our Earthly plane, and if that weren't enough, anxious glances at wrist watches showed it was the witching hour too. Whether such details would aid in the group's furtive purpose, they didn't know for sure—none of them had done anything of this nature before—but time and place and garments all lent a weight and seriousness to what had until recently been little more than an edgy game in their minds. Gone were the jokes and laughter they'd shared when discussing the ritual even the night before. Few dared even to murmur, lest they awaken the spirits said to dwell in the hills. Left to their own devices, only one of the robed figured would have chosen to remain, but none of the others dared to be the first among their peers to leave, and so there was nothing left but to see this thing through to the end.
“Are we ready to begin?”
The others winced as Alexia's voice broke the silence, and gave her resentful looks that went unseen under their hoods, but they nodded all the same. “Let's finish this and go home” was the thought on everyone's mind.
“Bring out the idol, then.”
Two of the largest among the group went up to the chest that sat among them, each grabbing one of the handles to carry it along, to the very top of the hill. There they set it down and opened the lid, then lifted out the heavy clay sculpture inside. Alexia closed the chest for them, and they placed the sculpture on top as though it were an altar.
The sculpture was Alexia's doing, and the thing that had inspired this enterprise It was a thing seen in dreams—a squatting creature, sitting halfway between a frog and a rabbit, fat and round and squamous, with a face that from certain angles seemed eerily close to the human despite its two sets of eyes. It had been the butt of many jokes among the group, yet here tonight, with Lady Selene casting her light on its portly carriage, it perched atop the hill with an almost pharaonic dignity, dull eyes taking in all its acolytes.
“Your candles,” Alexia urged them, and briskly rounded the ring of Nortonites handing out one to each, pulling or pushing them backwards or forward for a more perfect circle. She lit each candle with her own, and once they were all distributed she stood alone before the idol, looking up at the moon. She took a deep breath, then intoned the words she had practiced.
“Nchakha rooli'ug'uli gagnali ooss uli.” So began the chant from her dreams, near as she could render it in Latin script. It was strange, though; Alexia had practiced the words many times before, but never had it come out so smoothly, and so close to the inhuman voices he'd heard singing it, as it did tonight. Something must be guiding her tongue, she thought, but that only raised the question: to what end?
The others shuffled uneasily, though Alexia didn't notice. The sound of her speech seemed to tickle some ancient part of their brains, some preconscious instinct from ages before their first Sapien ancestors, when that which would one day give rise to humanity still scurried under saurian titans.
The earth itself seemed to be listening to Alexia's chant. The moon seemed brighter, the wind stronger, the chirps and buzz of insects louder, and even the grass and clover seemed to turn their leaves towards the sound of her voice, playing the flock to her sermon. How much of it was real, how much imagination? The robed figures could not decide. But the mist gathering around the idol, growing and billowing behind Alexia and taking on strange shapes—that, at least, was real, and the gasps of the others only confirmed it. Alexia was still only on the fourth verse when their warnings became impossible to ignore, and she turned to see the thing growing behind her. Her mouth opened in a voiceless cry, and she staggered back a pace, falling and tumbling over once before looking, dazed, at the shifting mist that squatted around the idol.
Slowly the mist oozed down towards her. This time Alexia cried out, and scrambled out of its path just as the thing snaked down the slope all together, its moonlit mass moving in defiance of the wind. Down in the lower hills it spread out and massed ever larger, swelling upwards and outwards at unnatural speeds. Not even a minute passed before the mist had become a mountainous nimbus fallen to the earth; pregnant, if not with rain then with thunder, as the low rumbling sounds suggested.
Once it had stopped growing, the thing took on more definite shape. For a moment it appeared almost a gigantic version of the frog-like idol, its scale magnified a thousandfold, yet it seemed almost to reconsider, and a different form took shape under the cover of mist, a figure that reached up into the sky as it stretched its squatting legs.
Human it was now—at least, closer to human than to anything else. Its fingers and bulbous toes ended in wicked claws rather than nails, its light grey-green skin shimmered with a million scales, and in lace of hair its thick, black, shoulder-length slowly writhed behind its head. It stood naked, but with nothing showing between its legs, and it seemed to measure a mile in height. Still, the overall shape was human, and female, not only by its chest and hips but also by its face.
The thing opened its eyes—four yellow rings, each in a field of perfect black, stared down at the Nortonites. Then, it opened it mouth.
All who heard its speech fell trembling to their knees and clutched the sides of their heads, not so much from the thundering intensity of its voice as from the things it had said. Only two syllables it spoke, if syllables they could be called, and even though it surely was no human language, still something of its meaning came through—no more than a sliver of it, but still enough to overwhelm with ideas the human brain never evolved to understand.
Surprise appeared on the being's face, and regret. The group felt something caress their minds before it spoke again. “Humans,” it said, the word almost a question on its lips. “You were the ones who summoned me? I thought to find the Yith again. Ah, time is such a troublesome thing. How long has it been since I came here last, I wonder?” Alexia struggled to raise her voice. “P-lease, spare our lives, a-ancient goddess. We never meant to call you here, I swear! We don't want the world destroyed or anything, just... please, don't hurt us.”
“Goddess? Destroy the world? My, what strange notions you humans have. Why would I ever want to destroy the world? And, please, don't call me goddess. Think of me more as a big sister—your big sister Os'aa'dhala, or Sadie, if you like.” The giant's smile would have almost been comforting, if not for the rows of wicked fangs it exposed. Some of the group slumped over and fainted at the sight. “Ah, are you little ones... sleeping? You must be tired. But I suppose it is 'late' for you, is it not? How long have you stayed up? And all just to summon me. I really must thank you for letting me visit, but now you ought to rest. Let me take you to your homes. Tomorrow we can meet again.” The being crouched—the heavens fell to meet the Earth, it seemed like—and extended a hand towards the gathering, thick fingers stretching for the hilltop. Those who hadn't passed out before did so now, their bodies landing softly on the grass while a fingertip near as big as the hill settled down on them.
Sadie felt them all down there—felt everything she touched. Every blade of grass, every drop of dew, every particle of air against her scaly skin. She felt every fiber in the humans' cloaks, every hair on their heads, and every beat of their hearts. Such little things they were, yet their warmth stood out wondrously to her beside the cool of the night. She could have spent an eternity taking in their little figures—time, to her, was nothing—but she knew enough of mortals to know that was asking too much of them. Frail and fleeting were the forms these little sparks took on, and all the more precious for it. She had not realized until now how much she missed them all.
When she raised her fingertip again, the humans lay safely on it, breathing peace sighs under the gaze of her watchful eyes. A dark tentacle stretched from the side of her head to collect them all and brought them into the writhing mass to keep them warm in the meantime. Then, she looked towards the humans' hometown, having learned of it in her brief contact with their minds. Ten thousand lights shone in that quiet town, the first of many dotting the land from here to the distant horizon. The great one ached with the longing to meet all those millions of her little brothers and sisters, but for now, she focused on getting these tired souls to their homes.
The countryside stirred at Os'aa'dhala's first step, but it was only with the second that they awoke, and come the third they were taking shelter under beds, running to check on their loved ones, or hurrying outside in nightgowns and boxers and slippers if not less, only to stop in their tracks as soon as they saw the figure slowly striding towards them.
The unearthly vision had an almost ethereal air, yet the tremors that followed each kilometer-spanning step gave the lie to that impression. A mountain walked or stumbled, it felt like, and yet the thing seemed ill-content to remain a mere mountain. Though hard to tell at first, the monster grew each passing second. By the time it stopped five miles away, the wispy clouds above had gone from background to foreground, half-shrouding everything above its thighs.
“Be not afraid, little sparks,” she spoke, her voice reaching their ears far faster than should have been possible. “I'm only here to put some children to bed. You can all go back to sleep, but please stay a minute so I can meet you at least.” She crouched and leaned forward, and a pair of hands near as big as the town itself came down to either side of it. Then her body lowered itself at speeds far greater than gravity should have allowed, until her chest fell not ten yards from Norton's southern end, blowing a gust of wind that swept gently over town.
Her eyes took everyone in at once, eyes which seemed to peer into the soul of everyone caught under them. Several dark tentacles slithered down from her head and stretched towards the city, each carrying three or four of the unconscious Nortonites, and with infinite precision deposited each into their homes. Meanwhile, her gaze held in place all those humans who had left their homes, her four eyes working independently to take in everyone at once, and when her tentacles were finished with her summoners, they came to play with everyone else, sweeping over the city to collect them by the dozen.
Seeing the monstrous things approaching, sliding over the tops of buildings that miraculously remained intact, many of the Nortonites tried to run, but they were soon overtaken. Some tried to hide, squeezing themselves where they thought she couldn't get to them, but her tentacles squeezed in after them to draw them all out. “Don't be so shy, little ones. You already took the trouble to come out and see me, so at least let your big sister Sadie give you a hug good night,” the monster giggled. She could tell they were afraid, but fear seemed such a little thing beside her hunger to meet all her little siblings. Even the ones still in their homes weren't safe from her, as her tentacles forced open doors and windows to pull everyone out, bringing them all to Sadie's open palm. Then, once everyone was gathered up, her fingers fell harmlessly, if overwhelmingly, on the townsfolk, trapping all in her fist.
The great one delighted in their little struggles as those frail bodies squirmed and pushed against her skin with all their might. What a joy it was to hold these little sparks! What determination, what will to live! It was the fiery passion of a still-young species, completely unlike the aeon-long near-perfection of the Yith, much less the eternal doing-less being of her kind. And all this was only the tiniest fraction of humanity; there were still billions more of these little sparks she had yet to meet.
What Sadie had been considering since her mind made contact with her summoners she now decided on. She would stay with these humans, getting to know their hopes and wishes, for as long as their kind still walked the Earth, guiding and watching over them as a big sister should. But if that's what she meant to do, this size was wholly inadequate.
“Thank you for humoring your big sister,” she said to the Nortonites, releasing her grip on them. “I'll see you all tomorrow, but for now, go get some rest. I still have many more humans left to meet.” Her tentacles gathered them up by the hundreds and carried them swiftly back to the homes she had seen them come from, practically stuffing them inside. Then, once everyone was back where they belonged, Sadie started to grow.
Those people with enough nerves to peer out again at the titaness saw her chest growing over the city. Her breasts, each a mountain in its own right, rolled over block after block, subsuming each and every building under their flesh. Thousands of people blanched at the oncoming death, but as those breasts rolled over each of them they found themselves perfectly safe and their houses untouched by the immense mass that by all rights should have reduced the town to dirt.
Elsewhere, Sadie's body stretched further and further across the land, harmlessly overtaking everything in its path, from fields to towns to forests and in time even mountains. All of it was buried under her, yet all of it remained untouched. Even those few humans who met her flesh without any protection were only harmlessly pinned under a cushion impossibly soft for its mass.
It was a delight to leave behind those quainter scales at which she'd appeared, far too constraining for one who was used to being with no limits, but more delightful still were the millions of little sparks engulfed by her being, some without even knowing it. Those ones would be in for a shock when they awakened, that much was for sure.
Sadie outgrew the country, then the continent, then the entire hemisphere, her body stretching from pole to pole. She giggled as she wrapped her arms around the globe, gargantuan hands surprising billions of mortals who had until now been too caught up in the daytime world to know what had been happening in their planet's darker side. Further and further her arms reached, meeting at the antipode of her chest, and still she grew bigger, holding the planet to her chest as it dwindled away in her arms. Soon her hands sufficed to hold the Earth, and she cupped it warmly between them, caressing whole continents with but a stroke of her fingers.
Still bigger she grew, until finally the Earth disappeared between her palms as no more than a pea beside her. Then the whole breadth of the planet's surface lay smothered in her skin, and every little soul thereon was made known to her.
Smiling, Sadie released the Earth, only to grip it gently between her the tips of her wicked claws, holding it by the poles and turning herself around to see its sun-brightened face. How it shone against the starry backdrop of infinite space.
Billions of souls stared back at her; she could feel their attention, sense them wondering what she meant to do to them. “Be not afraid, little sparks,” she said. “Your big sister Sadie is only here to keep you company. Ignore me, if you like. Live your lives as before. Just know that I'll be here if you need me, and you need only to call.” She turned herself around again, and brought the planet down to the cosmic canyon of her cleavage. Nestled there, between her two breasts, soft flesh holding the sides of the Earth without stopping it from spinning, the planet found its new home, just as Sadie found the brightly shining sparks of her little brothers and sisters.