Walk (Patreon)

From the cruising altitude of a passenger jet the world can seem a faraway place. Mountain ranges and river valleys are spread before you, seen only through breaks in the cloud, an impossible distance below. The world continues as another place, passive and inert, as you glide undisturbed above it all. The constant roar of the engines drowns out the world below, even the sound of the wind, the air rushing past at 600 mph, becomes part of the background noise inside the sealed tube that transports you from one continent to another. Except this time. This time as the sun rises before you, there is a rhythmic thud, that at first begins as a whisper in the air-conditioning but within a minute has become such a force as to rattle the seats. The land creeps past below, scattered clouds dotted across the landscape. And then she is spotted. At first there is one scream, then two, then a cacophony of panic spreads throughout the cabin. She is still far below but she is so big that she could surely reach up to touch the clouds. She saunters slowly across the landscape, distorting the idea of scale. The passengers watch her as you would looking down on someone walking in the street from a first storey window. She seems close enough to call out to, for her to hear you, but you are all specks of dust to her. Her strides cover dozens of miles, stepping over ranges of hills, roads, rivers. She walks casually and contentedly. Soon, you have passed each other, passengers strain to look back through the windows but now she has disappeared behind a bank of cloud. Messages and calls ping out to loved ones. There is something coming your way. Flee.

*I put out an early version of this image as a WIP for Big/Mega Boss tiers a few weeks ago. I've updated the landscape with a higher res one and learned more about how to make this kind of map work. Hopefully there will be more of these kinds of giga in the future.