The Harpy Matriarch - Part III (Alternate Ending) (Patreon)

A temple stood atop a pedestal-like hill, a respected sanctuary supported by proud columns and brought to life with stained glass depictions of saints. Its beauty alone had not caught her attention -- she considered it as gaudy as the rest of upper class aesthetics -- but how people pooled there, gathering under its roof for protection. It had become crowded and clogged with people and their prayers, a keen location for Atilda to play with.

“You have no gods that will help you now, insects! Fufu~!” Atilda bent forward so that she could closer perceive the church. She glanced at her carriage with a smile, ensuring it had some window of the scene below. “You should be praying to me. I will gladly show you the power of a god~”

The main halls of the church had been flooded by refugees seeking shelter from Atilda’s apocalyptic arrival. Families huddled together in distress as tremors rumbled under their feet, indications of where the giant outside moved. Panic swelled after each explosion of destruction, but sealed off from the madness was a chamber at the heart of the sanctuary. A secret to the common people, this circular room housed rare artifacts and ancient scrolls, all relics or understandings of magic that had been hidden for valid reasons. The power to channel the might of a god had been considered too wild to be controlled, but under the heartless talons of the massive harpy, the high priests of the church had concluded that this desperation was unfortunately necessary.

A rune was formed of gold and silver dust in the center. Candles and torches burned with a purple glow, their smoke swirling at the domed ceiling. These lights flickered when a quake rattled under the church, a thunder greater than any footfall yet. The priests, some young and others old, looked to each other worriedly. Among them, a figurehead ushered a chant to begin the ritual. Any additional delay, and the ritual would not be completed before all that was left of Redrun was the cobbled stone wedged in Atilda’s talons.

An arcane bolt of electricity ran through the rune, sparking up in corners as spiritual energy filled the chamber. Some shuddered with such power raised around them, but all priests kept their focus forward, disregarding the energy like they disregarded the cacophony outside. A connection to the gods was being made, a ritual that would imbue them with the power needed to thwart the giant threat.

The figurehead approached the middle, where a beam of holy light shined. He intended to finalize the ritual, to offer a precious gem to be the containment of such impossible power. But, only steps away from doing so, the figurehead tripped and stumbled on a violent shockwave, the gem falling to the brick floor. A number of priests left the circle and ceased chanting, but all were turned towards the walls as they violently shook. Pillars crumbled, glass shattered, and the ceiling above snapped under its weight. The priests knew then that it was too late, that Atilda had come for them.

More than just that chamber’s dome-shaped ceiling, the entire roof of the temple had been shred apart. The daylight filtered in through clouds of dust as debris fell onto the heads of cowering citizens, some of the stone fragments crushing on top of unfortunate victims. Panic broke into the hallways as screams of horror greeted the predatory stare from above. Far up in the sky, Atilda giggled at what her talon had dug up, simply amused by the people spilling into the streets they had struggled to get out of.

Having already adequately taunted the people, Atilda’s claw stretched out and around the temple’s base. Her claws snapped through the earth and the foundation it was built on before closing together in a grip, instantly making dust out of the walls meant to harbor protection and peace. Rubble rolled towards the center of the temple as the outside crumbled into its middle, resulting in countless deaths from failed evacuees. The talon curled upward, digging up the church and craning it into the air. It would make for a fair obstacle, a load of cobbled ruins that would surely prevent traffic both in and out of her newly acquired city.

As Atilda carried the weight over a row of houses, however, she felt a chill of energy travel from her talon and up her leg. She winced, just barely noticing the electric tickle; was this a sad counterattack by the priests trapped inside? In the corner of her vision, Atilda noticed a red glow faintly resonating from the bundle of stone and bricks. Magic, she deduced, but of what kind? Of what magnitude? Sorcery and divinity were foreign subjects to harpies, and Atilda was no different, leaving her blankly staring at the light in her clutches.

Then, a rupture. More of the church was unsettled in the talon’s grip as the light spread with greater intensity, a vibration steadily growing from within. Still was Atilda intrigued by what she held, too big to be fearful of whatever power was involved. She underestimated its significance, only realizing so when a grand pulse of energy surged out from the ruins. Its energy clung to Atilda, quickly enwrapping the titan with its red glow from the bottom up.

“Eh? What magic is this…?” Atilda asked aloud, making her confusion obvious to the crowds yet watching her across Redrun. The power she felt tingling over her feathers was enriching, imposing upon her a deep sensation of potential down to her gut. Nervously, Atilda wondered how to stop such a phenomenon, fearful of what effect this divine magic might have on her. She scowled down at the church’s empty lot of land where it had once been, but her attention flashed back onto the ruins in her claw, taking notice of the energy swelling beyond her readiness.

A warm power flooded Atilda with a sudden voltage. Even at her ludicrous scale, the sting was cringeworthy, and her talon instinctively snapped close with the temple in its grip. Whatever light had been centered on the temple was now fully imbued into Atilda, the remains of the sanctuary discarded as she stumbled backwards in astonishment. Careless steps toppled into city blocks and the stabilizing flaps of her wings hurled whirlwinds into the streets, but no movement could prevent her fall. Atilda’s ass crashed down onto Redrun’s wall, her tail feathers bursting through and over the gate she had intended to blockade. A deadly shockwave leveled the surrounding buildings and forced masses into the packed roads, the chaos of their panic falling deaf to Atilda as she recovered her senses.

Before she could begin to rise, Atilda felt an incredible sensation pulsate in her body. Starting from her chest and then branching out across every limb, Atilda writhed and eventually succumbed to groans, seemingly plagued with mysterious pains. Twitches of her legs resulted in a warehouse being bulldozed out of existence, a twist of her wing befell a mob of people she was unaware of. Before long, this destruction was accented by an eruptive howl, a snarl Atilda could no longer contain as she hissed over her strange circumstance -- but through this all, Atilda was not in agony.

Atilda closed her eyes tight as she felt another ripple of energy, followed by a growth. Immediately did her eye shoot open in alarm, her entire body expanding outward in a sudden burst. Redrun’s wall which she sat upon fell under more destruction as her sides tore through the defenses, leaving armaments and soldiers piled along her thighs. Survivors scrambled to flee, but another growth overwhelmed their attempt, taking them over with a wave of flesh. Her talons pierced through rows of houses and her rear extended out into the river, the city that was already too small for her dwindling even tinier in her shadow.

And she continued to grow, the bursts too spontaneous to predict. Atilda watched as her surroundings shrank, distressed by that she could not comprehend. Consistently, her gaze went to the carriage held in her wing, its diminishing shape a comparison to how swiftly she was growing. Within that vehicle, Countess Harmonia and her maid were in a frenzy by what they saw happen outside, the world of feathers stretching wider and further than they once knew it to, and up above, they felt the ever heavy gaze of the matriarch, the pressure too intense to disobey.

From where she had still fallen, Atilda scanned the horizons to understand just how huge she now was. Circles of cities and communities dotted the hillsides and plains, thin lines of roads connecting them all to Redrun, which itself was now small enough to Atilda for her legs to completely encircle. The thought uprose a giggle past her concerns; she had intended to trap the people of Redrun in the city, but the city itself was now trapped beneath her. Another scan across the land confirmed, too, that all she could see belonged to her.

She was silent, stunned by this development. Still continuing to scale up, Atilda finally started to move, lifting her legs up and out of the city. With her rise came a curtain of darkness, her shadow spread far by the setting sun so that it enveloped all of Redrun within it. Its coolness spelled a grim and debateless horror for the citizens, the prospects of abandoning Redrun for shelter now a false hope to rely on. Everyone could see for themselves how encompassing the harpy matriarch’s reach was, how her talons pierced the earth outside their walls and stretched high like divine pillars splitting the sky. Her claws alone were now big enough to replace what Atilda originally was, each digit longer than any of Redrun’s roads.

So tall was Atilda now that her head passed the clouds, dismissing them with her sinister stare across the human kingdom. Even as an avian creature, this height was surreal, especially so while on her feet. Only the grandest mountain of the country could rival her height, opposite of her across a week’s worth of traveling that could be trekked by her in a measly six steps. Soon, so too would that mountain be beneath her, a prediction that excited Atilda into taking her first step as a gargantuan terror.

The land broke under Atilda’s footfall like mounds of sand. A talon-shaped crater embedded the earth, herself completely disconnected from how tremendous this power was. What felt like dirt dispersing under her sole was to the humans below a cataclysmic attack from the heavens. In a plain known for its peaceful atmosphere, there now existed a deep chasm, itself a feature lost within a dusty wasteland of uprooted earth broken into the air. Then, out of delight, her claws curled, scarring the world further and swallowing a pair of hamlets into the crumbling pit.

Atilda stood in the open, surveying her surroundings carefully but with a smile always aimed at where she looked. Continued steps across the country caused more chaos, an inconceivable amount of catastrophic events strung together by her joyful stroll. The amusement manifested into a laugh, an echoing blast of noise that genuinely rained across the hundreds of thousands of lives she now conquered, but there was only one among all of this civilization who she had any particular interest in, a woman still held prisoner in the curve of her wing.

The door to the carriage was kicked open -- miraculously, the vehicle had rolled over back onto its broken wheels while nearly forgotten in Atilda’s grasp. Harmonia exited first with a leap, her maid just behind her in a sickened slump out the door. Harmonia yelled for her to follow, but as she pivoted and witnessed the alien landscape, her throat tightened into silence. Purple plumes surrounded them like a valley, a world made of feathers that their puny carriage was lodged between. All of Redrun could fit in this stretch of a wing, Harmonia despairingly imagined, but it was her and her maid alone that survived in such a pathetic place, little more than lice that understood their lowly place atop a god-like harpy.

Atilda’s laugh brought Harmonia to her knees, her chuckling greatly overpowering the scream of death the countess roared back with. The air never fully returned to silence, not with the echo of such a laugh still lingering in the feathery tunnel. More intimidating than either Atilda’s grasp or her amusement was the strict glare she had pointed onto them. Harmonia shivered in disbelief; they were so small, yet still could Atilda locate them, her eagle eyes sharply pinpointing their miserable place in her possession.

“Fufufu~ What do I possibly compare you to at this point…?” Atilda’s taunt was heard across the kingdom, every breath of word clearing the skies of clouds. The impact of her voice was most tremendous for Harmonia and her maid, the sheer weight of her volume pinning the two where they were. “Far beneath an insect-- perhaps a crumb? Is that all the countess can amount to now? A single crumb in my wing? Fufu~” Mixed under her speech were thundering pounds of footfalls, her strides unimpeded by anything geographical. “No no, even that would be bigger than you~ You truly are like pollen stuck to a feather… and before long… you’ll be lost in my wing, truly like a speck…”

Harmonia wailed -- her maid was in total grief, yet to clearly react to the reality she was in or the words bellowed from above. The countess surrendered herself to prayers, collapsing to her knees and begging for any divine justice to rescue her. Her tearful pleas for retribution were made under a break of silence, a worrying gap in Atilda’s amusement that foretold wickedness. The harpy watched this act and listened well, coyly allowing Harmonia to pray hopelessly.

“Hmm? Are you asking for the help of a god?” Atilda teased, bringing her wing closer to her face. More than ever did Atilda’s grin swallow all that Harmonia could see, the curved lips wider than all of Redrun’s walls. “How pathetic. Do you not see that I’m the only god you’ll meet? Fufu, speak to me directly, runt! I am your god! Is it shelter you beg for? Do you not wish to live your final moments as dust between my feathers? Hmhm… What fate does a noble such as yourself really deserve?

“Ah, I know a place -- somewhere you’d be especially deserving of.” Before this quaking announcement could be understood, Harmonia and her maid began feeling another ascent. The wind of such a motion rolled them backwards along the ever-increasing feather they were isolated atop of. When they next checked the sky, they could comprehend nothing but Atilda’s lips, from which gusts of humid breaths escaped. The long tongue within could barely be seen, like a gargantuan seabeast tepidly breaking the surface in small glimpses of itself. Harmonia hugged her head into her arms, blinding herself of what was to come, while her maid was paralyzed in fear, openly gawking at the massive cave that was a harpy’s throat opening to devour them.

The tongue was revealed, drooling with a lake’s worth of saliva. It beached first amidst the field of feathers of Atilda’s wing before quickly rolling up the length towards Harmonia. The pink wall stretched too far and wide to possibly escape, encroaching where the carriage was kept like an unstoppable flood. With what little will she had left, Harmonia whipped around and dashed forward, regardless of where that path could take her. Ultimately, she was too slow to even reach the carriage again before the tongue was at her back, its stickiness latching onto her without remorse. Blissfully uncaring, the tongue continued to travel upwards, crushing the carriage into forgettable splinters before picking up the stranded maid off from a tuft of feather.

The inside of Atilda’s mouth stretched out before Harmonia and her maid like a cavern into hell. A boiling heat perpetually existed in this chamber of building-sized teeth, the monstrous tongue housed inside producing thick waterfalls of saliva that drenched the fleshy floor and walls. Harmonia was a captive to the tongue, displaced on top of it where none of her screams of peril could be heard, abandoned to the whims of how the tongue twisted and turned. In a vague distance, she heard additional howls to her own, the cries of her maid as she clung to where a mighty fang met the earthy gums. So tiny were they that they were not even crumbs of food to the mad harpy, but specks of existence that the matriarch could simply ignore, allowing the mundane production of spit in her mouth to create an unbearable atmosphere of torment.

Atilda leaned forward with amusement, keeping a wing crudely up to her mouth as she held in bouts of laughter. “What miserable things you are…! How miserable…!” she chuckled, her face burning red with every restrained breath. “Welcome…! To your new world…! I’ll have you live the rest of your insignificant lives here in my mouth. Drink from my spit and live off what’s stuck between my teeth.” Her glare sharpened, aimed incidentally down onto Redrun below her. “Is even talking to you impossible? Is my voice an earthquake, a hurricane? Fufu~ My mouth will be your realm now, little countess~ at least until you decide to be swallowed, fufu…!”

The city of Redrun was in disarray. They had to recover from the destruction Atilda caused when she was only a titan among them, but outside their crumbling walls, onlookers saw the craters of Atilda’s footsteps, the plumes of dust and debris rocketed into the air wherever her talon fell. There was no order among the army of guards, no control over the panic, no possibility of defending their homes. They despaired underneath Atilda, whose attention was angled back onto them from above the clouds.

“Now… what to make of a tiny hive like this?” Atilda mused, confidently sneering at the trivial lives bustling between her claws. She wanted to peer closer, so her talons unexpectedly lunged behind her, carving through a range of mountains and flattening a landscape of towns and hills. Her head twisted to look over this careless chaos, giggling before returning her gaze onto Redrun, positioned in a crawl outside their gates.

Claiming the territory for herself, Atilda encircled the city with both wings, shielding the tiny citizens from the sunset’s light as if forbidding them from that hope. Her idle laughter was met with cries of horror as the people gawked up at her all-encompassing form, the sky completely devoured by her mass. Every giggle awakened a whirlwind that ravaged more of the city, tearing at banners and throwing debris into spirals; an unintended huff of breath through her nose blew apart the houses that she had before tread upon, effectively deleting them from existence with just an exhale.

Atilda first admired the trail of destruction she had made earlier, the distinct marks of her walking across the city. Though she viewed each individual life within Redrun as utterly unimportant, the community altogether belonged to her, and she thus felt a responsibility. Perhaps just a cruel twist of fate, it was nonetheless this very city that enlarged her to this dominating scale, and so she thought it only fair that she offer them salvation -- salvation by her standards.

“Greetings again, Redrun~” Her voice bellowed through the streets like an unavoidable announcement. Like fires washed out by a gust, the mobs of people were struck to a standstill by her gigantic words. “The voice you hear now is that of your god. Fufu~ my will is your reality. You humans exist according to my mercy! If you wish to thrive in any sense, you will obey~ You will all be indoctrinated as pets! Pets that I will keep, as long as you manage to survive, fu~”

Atilda’s expression grew yet more sinister as she pushed herself closer towards the city, hovering over and past its wall so that it was warped in her shadow. More intimidating than her amused glare were the two meteors swinging by her chest, planets of flesh that swayed with an immensity that gravity had no influence over. The weight of her breasts could be felt as a pressure from even this far, the people cowering and fleeing from the massive orbs that were drawn towards them. Atilda watched her tactics unfold, her intention to corral the remaining citizens of Redrun into one half of the city -- the only half that she expected to still stand.

After a suspenseful few minutes of the breasts harboring outside Redrun, their assault began. Flooding over the gate was a wave of flesh that was unimpeded by the defensive walls, even as desperate soldiers volleyed their final, fruitless attacks against the incoming wall. Atilda shivered as she felt the barrier be brought to dust, continuing forward with greater excitement. Her right nipple crashed into a tall tower, its top half splintering into chunks that rained upon confused citizens. The streets were overcrowded with people that surrendered their property and belongings, clawing one another in futile attempts to outrun the enormous breasts closing in behind them. No wall or fortification could even slow Atilda’s push forward into town, her chest like a curtain of death that spelled the end to the shadow-covered city.

But Atilda’s reign of destruction ended when her breasts occupied the southern half of the city. Their roundness was blanketed in gray and black debris by the time it reached the middle of Redrun, continuing to impose a vast pressure on the struggling community. To make their lives worse, Atilda collapsed her chest onto the city center, laughing as she felt the many buildings, monuments, and establishments crumble under her impossible weight. Her breasts alone, merely placed down onto the earth, had swallowed that half of the city, crashing into the ground with such force, fissures split through the roads and dust billowed up into the air. Panicked citizens too close to the impact were blown off their feet by the shockwave made by the harpy’s breasts, but at least they had survived through an event that had snuffed out the lives of a thousand folk.

Some took refuge inside buildings, hoping for a moment to rest while the giant positioned herself. Many stormed the vineyard and its abandoned manor, looting it for whatever could be found while on their rush outside the city’s reach. The fraction of the population that remained was desperate to escape Redrun, even with Atilda’s wings sealing them in its borders. They cared not for how Atilda allegedly claimed them, but it was no exaggeration that she intended to be a god to these survivors, a god worthy of appropriate, obedient followers.

Atilda’s glare softened as her lips let loose a stream of a melody. She sang in a whisper, carefully monitoring the effect her humming would have at such a scale. With her one eye opened, she surveyed the mobs scrambling underneath her, patiently waiting for the tides to turn. Gradually did her hum start to manipulate the people, their sorrow and fear lost in a muddy vision that overtook their senses. Where people once fought one another to survive, where crowds once gathered to pray for aid, there was slowly coming an uneasy calm. Washed over by Atilda’s music, they shrank further by falling under the matriarch’s command, hypnotized by the harpy melody.

“Breathe,” Atilda demanded, tilting her head coyly. “Breathe the air of your god~”

It was not particularly strong nor sharp, but a notable scent infected the air. It was her harpy musk, traditionally known for its mind-altering effects. On a scale as huge as Atilda, that musk was now impossible to resist, running through the remaining half of Redrun and spreading from person to person. Some collapsed with flushed faces, choking on the odor once they realized it was playing with them like puppets, but none could ultimately pull away from its influence. Once the scent had been breathed in, they had become slaves to Atilda, turning towards the mountain-like breasts that had bulldozed their proud city.

“Come to me,” Atilda suggested, as if it were not a command to her followers. “I will be your new home~ Your god is gratefully offering you herself to live on! If you have any respect for your god, you will climb my chest and be saved from this city’s destruction~ In due time, your precious Redrun will be just a pit in the earth -- a reminder of the greatness of harpies!”

Absorbed into the harpy musk, the survivors of Redrun could not resist this command. Drawn to the breasts like an instinct, the mobs completely turned direction, retreating back into the city and clamoring to the invincible breasts that had flattened the land. With as much effort as every human could conjur, they scaled the wall of skin like fleas on a beast. Some embedded themselves into the cleavage while others threw themselves in front of the bosom, showing respect and worship towards that which had ruined them. All of their combined struggles was enough to lightly tickle the matriarch, a shiver of her delight functioning as a quake that threatened to shake off those on her flesh.

Once enough of the crowds had mounted her breasts, Atilda shifted her position, casually reforming the landscape that her body was. She moved so that her breasts were exposed from both the ground and her leather straps, lifting and dropping them again in an event that shook the city all over once more. Erect nipples were now on display, each bigger than all of Harmonia’s manor, firm enough to crush through roofs and walls as Atilda saw fit. She wanted them to appear like idols of worship, and appropriately so did citizens swarm these bumps of skin in order to earn their salvation.

The everpresent musk continued to warp the minds of those tickling Atilda. The scent drove them to obscene levels of lust, especially so due to its size. Atilda’s musk was all that filled their minds, and none could realize the acts they committed upon each other. As if part of some performance for Atilda to enjoy, the mobs atop her breasts frenzied into orgies, grasping each other's forms and collapsing into love-making. When they could not tackle their partners into the bouncy flesh, they instead threw themselves onto the expanse of skin, tending to it with long licks and wide embraces that their god could not possibly comprehend at her scale.

But Atilda knew what effect she had, and relished in her own glory. The city that had caused her kind so much strife was now an accessory for her to control; the countess that wished her and the harpies dead was now a speck swamped by saliva. Atilda laughed as the moon rose, a laugh that echoed across the country demonically. The harpy matriarch had ascended to godhood, and her appetite for lust and violence had not since diminished.