A Guardian's Ascension (Chapter 1) (Patreon)

Sophia planted one armored boot through the sparking ovular gate of the portal, stepping directly from the stone courtyard of the Citadel right onto the familiar grassy topography of the hills wreathing the perimeter of her home village. Emerging the rest of the way for her debut solo defense, it was strange to feel the ground under her soles resembling the elevation changes of anthills, rather than the high dunes she recalled exhaustingly scaling as an adventurous child. Stranger still was the feeling she experienced when, standing at her revised stature of no less than five hundred and twenty-seven feet tall for the first time ever over the land she’d grown up in, she cast her gaze first from the crackling dimensional rift severing the tree line just a half-mile north, then over to the humble sprawling life of the town she once called home, but which now looked appropriately toy-like and distant.

Following her months away at the Citadel with the veteran Guardians, essentially eating, breathing, and sleeping nothing else but the vigorous training needed to become her village’s personal towering sentinel, the blonde giantess expected the sight of the rift to make her stomach drop. Certainly her nerves were sickeningly aflutter on that fateful day back when she’d inadvertently proved herself worthy (at least in the eyes of her gargantuan peers) of the height and power she now wielded. Holding a sword taken off a fallen guardsman, watching the blade shudder as she fought to keep her hands from quaking in tandem with her pounding heartbeat, Sophia had felt just about as far as she could from heroic. She had no fight training. No tactical education. No idea how long she could last. As she took swings at the few remaining orcs scrambling down the hillside with no one else in sight to stop them, relying on her agility and scrappiness from a young life spent working hard in the family’s blacksmith shop, she’d expected every individual encounter with a fang-baring monster to result in the abrupt end of her life. Yet she’d kept on gritting her teeth, cleaving through orc limbs while her pulse stampeded out of her chest, with her sole attention paid to the necessity of what she was doing now in order to protect the mothers and children hiding in the barn just behind her, no matter the cost to herself.

Today, though, standing at over fifty stories tall, and watching a hundred times the beasts she’d slain that day now rampaging through the trees, Sophia felt only resolute: not exactly relaxed, but assured. Somehow the terror of an orc, and even bigger monstrosities, was reduced to almost nil once she was given the physiology that allowed her to squish, slice, and stomp them with the ease of beetles, not to mention the honing of skills that allowed her to do all that beast-slaying with requisite efficiency. The anxiety she’d expected to feel when looking toward that animalistic army instead took hold when the giantess pivoted on her boot-clad heels and looked to her village again, spotting the streets and homey landmarks she knew like the back of her hand, albeit never before observed from a bird’s eye view. The quickening of her heartrate while glancing toward those puny citizens gathered fearfully in the streets wasn’t on account of any doubt in her ability to successfully protect them, however. Rather, Sophia couldn’t help but wonder what they would think, to look over the hills and see the girl they once knew, soft-spoken and tender, now looming above them all while garbed in gilded black-and-white battle robing, and brandishing an equally-regal sword and shield set each longer than any single road in the village. Would they believe she was enough? Did she deserve to stand for them in this way? Was there even a remote chance that the Guardians, in all their wisdom and grace, had made an error thanks to a one-time fluke of foolish self-sacrificing bravado?

Shaking her head, Sophia frowned, pushing such thoughts from her head. This was what she’d prepared for. And if the Guardians declared her ready, then who was she to question their judgment? Suddenly the faces of her loved ones flashed through her mind: Her parents. Allian and Vera, her elder brother and sister. Elisaben, her best friend practically since birth. Torv, her soulmate and no-doubt future spouse, whom she’d pined over since childhood. Though she stood for and deeply cared for each and every individual living in the village (almost all of whom she knew by name), these faces in particular would guide her today, and give her strength more figurative but nonetheless just as vital as her literal ability to crumble boulders in the palm of her hand or flatten a serpent’s throat under her toes.

“This is my home,” Sophia whispered toward the advancing wave of creatures. “And you are not welcome here.”

And with that, she thundered straight toward the danger, just as she had that day while standing at only five-foot-three and wearing rags for armor. The motion of her body generated notable wind, and her footfalls set off more resonant seismic tremors than the chaotic patter of a thousand orcs, trolls, and all manner of bloodthirsty freaks piling onto the land. Rather than driving the razor-sharp business end of her gigantic sword straight toward the green-skinned frontline underlings, though, Sophia’s warzone awareness kicked in like clockwork. Choosing a point where the hills leveled off into a valley a quarter-mile from the village outskirts, the giantess brazenly bashed her shield against a steep cliffside heaped up to the level of her statuesque thigh with deadly stones the size of marbles to Sophia. Once the edge caved in thanks to the impact of her white-knuckled blow, a rockslide flooded the valley’s dip with sedimentary obstacles and dust, forcing the onslaught of jagged-armored creatures to halt their momentum.

Though a field of stones wasn’t exactly going to hold off this horde forever, as dozens were already laboriously traversing it while coughing through cloudy grit in order to pillage the town, all Sophia needed was a speed bump to prevent any stragglers from running unchecked around her feet toward the goalpost of their murderous aims. With the herd’s charge stunted, the giantess easily accessed the muscle memory of her training. She swung her iron-wrought boot through the crowds of orc bruisers like a battering ram, dominoing the grunty lot of them to the unyielding force of her metal-clasped foot. Then Sophia would drive her heels toward the earth for another punting launch, flattening minor battalions of evildoers into cratered footprints twenty-five yards long apiece. At the same time, her shield acted in its intended purpose, easily rebounding flaming catapult payloads fired from the army’s crudely constructed instruments of war, but also served nicely in lieu of a shepherd’s crook, allowing the giantess to easily nudge the fiending crowds of orcs and trolls roughly about, to keep them centered in the valley, and conveniently clustered together so she could bring her boot colliding atop them, or drive her blade into their midst. Her well-schooled prowess aside, though, Sophia’s improvisation in battle proved ready too, as she casually flicked impish critters off the ends of her hair, and smushed some mountain-climbing orcs against the burly softness of her quads using her sword hilt if they managed to climb up her boot.