The bridge of the Pasargadae lit up in a sudden furore of blinding light, startling everyone in it.

Commander Marik Elias spun his head around as he jumped out of his chair, seeing what he expected, but a deep, disturbing feeling of something being out of place engulfing him. Aria didn’t usually teleport herself right into the bridge, she never really had a reason to, she was a person who really took her time, understandably.

“Marik.” She said as her eyes met his, her gloomy mood frightening him. “What is the latest report on her?”

“Uh, nothing new, mistress.” He said with a shaky voice. “We are simply monitoring the planet for any activity that would concern you, just as you ordered. We are almost certain that the subject has teleported herself on the opposite side of the planet judging by a spike of radiation on that side at the time of her teleportation, but since we did not expect something like that to happen at that time, we weren’t able to locate her spawning point with precision.”

She nodded, turning towards the planet beyond the main window. “Eve.”

Her trusted artificial companion sprung to life within the bridge of the ship. “Yes, Aria?”

“Find her. Now. Use any discrete means necessary. Do not show yourself.”

“Yes, Aria.”

Marik knew the protocol. Flickering lights on the screens and subtle sounds throughout the hull announced the imminent departure of drones that would swarm around the planet now. They would scan the planet on all spectrums, gather data, monitor activity of humans below, especially the far less civilized side of the planet where the woman known as Mae hid herself. Anything out of the ordinary, the drones will know about it and by extension, so will Aria. But it would take a few hours until they find her.

“And Eve, where is Mase?”

Marik’s heart skipped a beat. What has my son done now?

“Cell room 3B.” The AI responded.

Aria then turned and walked towards the interior of the ship. She could easily beam herself right on the cell, but her slow steps and posture indicated a state of deep thought to Marik. It was unlike anytime he ever seen her, and it disturbed him deeply.

---

The hissing sound of the cell’s panel door woke Mase up immediately. It was Aria.

He crouched up with heavy eyelids, watching as she slowly entered his comfortable cell before the door panel shut back closed. That’s when he noticed the way she looked at him, the dark expression she bore on her face, it worried him. And she was holding something on her hand.

“What is-”

“Be silent.” She commanded. “Just watch, first.”

She extended her arm and opened her palm, revealing a tiny figure on it. Mase had to squint to make out the features of the human she held on her palm, eyes still sore from having been woken out of deep sleep. But even the most remote sense of tiredness disappeared without a trace when he made the figure out to be Ken, his first lieutenant and best friend during the rebellion.

Then she turned her hand and dropped him.

Mase watched almost in slow-motion, mouth gaping, as Ken’s flailing body fell and hit the floor with a smack. His mind scrambled to make sense of the situation, having been woken up by Aria just to see his old friend’s twitching body screaming in pain at her feet. Why?

And then her foot smashed on top of the little body.

Mase jerked backwards, leaning against the metallic walls. Did he just witness his best friend get crushed under her foot? No… it can’t be. It was just a dream, just a little nightmare he needed to wake up from.

But tricking his mind didn’t work, and only when the alarming need of breathing rang on his mind was he finally able to accept this to be reality. He raised his eyes from the pool of blood on the floor, following the the long, slender leg up until his gaze passed her body and met her eyes.

“You will tell me everything.” She said. “Every little detail you remember.”

“You are mad.” This wasn’t her. Something was wrong. Mase felt like he was freezing up.

“Don’t make me physically torture you, Mase. I won’t do it. You don’t deserve that kind of pain. But I can very well torture you by other means.”

Mase was truly frightened. He had never seen Aria like this, not even when he had witnessed her killing thousands under her feet. She always held an arrogant demeanor in her pose, always being playful, unregretful, uncaring of the consequences of her actions. It’s why she hated her, but somehow he knew, deep down that in the end, it was an act. Only her lust was real.

That, and the darkness she displayed in her expression right now.

“This, “ she said as she smeared the bloody remains of his former best friend along the floor while she dragged her foot back in its original position, “was just an example that I mean it. Next in line is your father, then your brother and sister. Then your whole home planet. And I will make you witness it all. If you don’t want to know what true despair means, talk. Now.”

He believed her without a second thought, and he talked.

---

She sat on her knees in the middle of the bed, surrounded by battle-hardened soldiers.

Puny and weak, each of them barely an inch tall, incomparable to the might of her body. She didn’t need to be this big, they were no match for her even at their normal size, but the additional dimension the size difference provided was exhilarating, always has been.

Thirtyfive-thousand years, and still she tensed the same way. Her breathing quickened, her heart-beat grew stronger and her skin flushed red. Thirty-five thousand years, and her twisted primal urges still felt the same, the rush of power that coursed through her veins grabbing hold of her emotions, a vice she couldn’t shake off.

No, she didn’t want to. She was tired, and it was the only thing that kept her in touch with reality. For all her intellect, all that she has built, all that she has seen and all that she has experienced, nothing felt more real than this urge, this need for release, especially at the expense of their lives.

She looked them in their faces, the terror they betrayed. Those were men that had killed, that knew what it meant to take a life. Most people are not able to bear the weight of such power, but those soldiers do. Most people break in the face of extinguishing a life, but those soldiers relish it. They feed upon that power, that control.

And she wielded so much more of it than they did.

Control, that is what she wanted right now. She left like her grip was loosening, she needed to reaffirm her control over her dominion. She knew it was just that, a feeling and nothing more for she still was unstoppable, unkillable, unbreakable, but she needed to shake it off, and there was no better way than doing so by depriving cold-hearted killers of what they valued most: their pride.

They still wore their armor, still wielded their weapons. Hundreds of them trapped on her bed, canopied and enclosed by impenetrable curtains, having nowhere to hide but the folds of her sheets. And they were all at the mercy of her body.

She leaned back a bit, as if trying to lay on her back but stopping while everyone beneath it scurried away in panic. She didn’t want to break those idiots there, not yet at least. Instead she leaned forward again and then rose up on her feet. She studied her toy soldiers a little from her vantage point, a slight smile forming on the corners of her lips, then closed her eyes and let her body freefall into the bed.

Of course, the bed rippled. And of course, her soldiers were thrown up in the air like rag dolls. She really loved the feeling of countless bodies striking against various parts of her body while they bounced around, especially the cold armor that felt like rain drops against her skin. Then she laid still for a few moments, enjoying their faint cries of pain and terror as they regained their bearings.

When she reopened her eyes, they immediately wandered to one who landed on her left breast right beside her nipple, looking entirely confused. A spear, presumably his, rolled down the slope of her breast and she moved to catch it with her fingers, less than half the size of a toothpick. The shadow cast by her hand caused the soldier to scurry backwards until he was backed up against the fleshy nub.

Then the gigantic hand presented the spear to the soldier who became even more confused. He looked back at Aria’s face who gestured him to take the spear on his hand. He did, and stood up on the wobbly surface. Aria then moved her finger and stroked her nipple with it once while her eyes stayed fixed on the little soldier.

“Charge it.” She commanded him. “Shove your spear in it.”

The soldier, barely able to stand and hold the spear on his shaking hands, looked at her face with astonishment, then shifted his gaze back and forth between it and the nipple.

“Now!” She broke his hesitance.

He charged the nub, barely able to keep himself from falling over, and drove his spear in it.  Aria felt the sharp, darting pain, but the soldier didn’t pierce the flesh, and it only turned her on. Not that he couldn’t do it, the spear was sharp enough, but he was too weak.

“Again, until I tell you to stop.”

He did. But every shove of his spear only served to engorge her nipple in size. It was utterly futile. At first he held a little back, but then he grew frustrated and humiliated that he couldn’t beat a woman’s nipple anymore, so he put all his strength into the effort.

Aria watched his pathetic efforts while biting her lower lip. She made him so helpless, and she loved it. Her breast, despite its easily perceptible appearance, comprised only one hundredth her entire body mass. And her nipple in turn was just as small compared to the breast itself, yet the little soldier struggled against that. Very soon, he grew tired by his efforts though, so she grabbed his body, perched it atop the nipple, and concentrated.

It was difficult to shrink and keep them so, and the difficulty grew exponentially the more you wanted to. But she was Aria, not some average size-shifter. Pain gripped the little soldiers body as she held him in place while he slowly shrank. She let go when he became smaller that the surface of her nipple, but didn’t stop with the shrinking until she could barely make him out.

When he finally regained his bearings, he found himself on an unrecognizable landscape made up of wavy, protruding skin. She had reduced him to a size smaller compared to her nipple than the size he was previously compared to her whole body. She moved her index finger, and gently touched the top of her nipple, trapping the soldier. The most sensitive nerve ends of her whole body were barely enough to percept the faintest signals coming from his struggling body.

She had reduced him to almost nothing. Once, he might have been a fearless soldier, he might have killed, pillaged and raped with the army, but she had taken it all away. His humanity, his dignity, his pride, everything.

Now, she thought as she pressed hard and dragged her finger across the surface, you are nothing more than an worthless, unrecognizable streak of blood on my nipple.

Her eyes then shifted to the soldiers surrounding her and the fearful gazes their faces betrayed.