SPIRITUAL GROWTH

by Crow Magnon

- Prologue

  Long ago, in a nearly forgotten age, the world was nearly consumed by a force known only as Ragnarok. To counter the Ragnarok, Gaia, Soul of the Planet, gave birth to two Guardians. These Guardians were Rosalia, Spirit of Life, and Mortanis, Spirit of Law. Their battle with the Ragnarok was a long and terrible one, but eventually they used the power of Gaia to banish the evil force from the planet.

  Their work was not finished, however. Almost all life had been extinguished by the Ragnarok. To preserve what remained, they gave up their remaining power to the surviving life, sacrificing themselves in the process.

  Centuries have now passed.

  The woman ran through the desert, her priest's robes billowing in the cold night breeze. She had to run. She had to get away from the terror that that was behind her.

  She could still see the carnage. The image was burned into her eyes. Men ... women ... children ... all reduced to little more than a few patches of red-stained earth. The instant she had seen it, she had started running. She had no idea how long she had been running. Perhaps only minutes, perhaps days. All she knew was that she had to keep running, to get as far from that death and destruction as she could.

  Suddenly, she fell as pain lanced up her leg. Something had pierced her foot. She looked back, afraid that what she was running from might catch up with her. All she saw, though, was the endless desolation of the desert. The she looked down at what she had stepped on, and her eyes widened in horror.

  It hadn't caught up with her. It had been waiting in ambush! There, in her footprint, was what remained of her village. She could clearly see every detail, every stone of every crushed building, even though they were little bigger than grains of sand to her.

  And there, stuck in her foot like a small thorn, but hurting like a red-hot poker, was the belltower of the village chapel.

  Her chapel.

  Her village.

  Destroyed.

  By her.

  She screamed until she woke up.

  Leeda, clad only in her underclothes and nightshirt, leaned her back against the outer wall of the chapel and watched as the sun slowly rose over the mountains. The peaceful serenity was enough to take her mind off of the nightmare from the now-dying night. She couldn't remember many of the details, but it had frightened her enough that she had been unable to go back to sleep.

  The chapel was at the top of a small hill, and had a clear view of the entire village of Solace. It was a fairly large village, with a little more that 250 souls living in it, but from the top of the hill, it would be easy for someone to imagine themselves a giant gazing down upon all the little homes and shops.

  Leeda was already considered a 'giantess' due to the fact that at 7'1, she was taller than anyone else in the village by at least seven inches, and her lithely toned body was surpassed in strength only by Gehn, the village blacksmith, and Karn, the carpenter. Her breasts, which rested on her chest at most people's eye-level, were also quite large, even for a woman of her height, each the size of a fairly-sized melon. As if their size wasn't impressive enough, they did not sag a bit, and not even the loosest robes could disguise their firm roundness. Add in her beautiful, lightly tanned face, green almond-shaped eyes, and braided red hair than hung down to her waist, and it should come as no surprise that the men of the village flocked to chapel every Solsday.

  As the sun slowly rose, Leeda could see tiny people moving around through the windows of their little buildings. The image suddenly appeared in Leeda's mind of her as an actual giantess, walking down the of the village, towering over the little buildings. She could just imagine all the little people hurrying to get out of her way, their tiny faces turned up to look at her. 250 faces, all of which she knew personally, looking up at her in awe and fear. The thought of it made her want to cry, and she only barely managed to fight back the tears that welled up in her eyes.

  "Mother Leeda?" a flute-like voice piped up off to her side. Leeda turned her head and looked up (though not very far) at the face of her apprentice, Mina, who bowed respectfully. "Are you well, Mother?"

  Leeda sighed, pushing her full bosom against the fabric of her nightshirt.

  "Yes, I am well. I simply could not sleep, and chose to watch the sun rise." She smiled and looked into her apprentice's youthful face, praying to the Guardians that she was convincing. Mina was 16, eight years younger than Leeda, and had an air of childlike purity and innocence to her due to her porcelain beauty and young, almost childlike face, but the priestess had learned long ago that behind that mask of innocence was a mind intelligent far beyond its owner's years.

  Whether Mina believed her or not, though, she simply bowed again. "I have already taken the liberty of preparing for the Solsday sermon, Mother."

  That broke Leeda out of her reverie. She had forgotten that it was Solsday! She nodded to Mina and stood up, a little too quickly as it turned out, and got hit by a mild wave of dizziness. Mina immediately took her mentor's arm to help steady her. Once she regained her equilibrium, she thanked Mina and hurried into the chapel.

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