Return of the Sphinx (Patron Reward) [VAULT] (Patreon)

[This is a reward for an anonymous patron! Thank you so much for the support~]

The proud metropolis had suddenly been dwarfed by monolithic pillars on either of its sides. They were paws, and thousands of lives panicked between them, the many souls within gawking at the creature that had been spontaneously summoned. Lurking high over their heads was a lion’s body, but where the head would be was instead a woman’s torso, rising higher still -- miles high, a straight posture that overlooked the continent that the city was central within.

All eyes were aimed at this monster dominating the horizon. Across the globe, emergency broadcasts streamed the scene from their distant locations, warning the world of an insurmountable foe. Everything was now about her, yet all she concerned herself with at the time was the one city, and the judgement she was to cast onto it.

She smirked, though her subjects were oblivious to the expression so high above them. “Humanity has ascended far while I was away,” she announced with an air-rippling voice. Ultimately, her tone was casual and unemphasized, yet still massive enough to produce a deafening rumble. “All this progress, however, has come at a steep cost. How quickly humans can forget what their purpose is for, ah…”

The lion’s paw rose, then swung back into the earth, piercing through the outer crust as if it were all loose soil in her grasp. The city shook on its foundations, and many structures failed to stay standing, overtaken by rapidfire earthquakes until they crumbled where they stood. Chaos stormed the city like a tornado, but the ruins of their buildings were a distraction to what was ongoing. They did not realize, nor could they comprehend, that their city was no longer of the earth, but high above it within the paw of a goddess -- the great and all-powerful sphinx.

The city limits spilled like crumbs into the crevices of the paw. Single threads of fur rose as tall as the lowrises, and even the tallest skyscraper was shamed by one of the sphinx’s claws. Citizens rushed towards the center of their city, avoiding cracks in the streets that formed due to the uneven surface. There was hope, a shred if nothing else, and the sphinx dwelled on that energy with a glare.

“Still persistent,” she giggled. A human hand daintily hovered near the city like a satellite. “Just like I had left you. It is proof that as advanced as you humans have become, you are still the same insects as before my sleep.”

The sphinx was a goddess to humanity -- she had been, at least, for tens of thousands of years. In those eras, she was a force of nature that all budding civilizations feared. It was in her shadow, with little blessings of mercy, that humanity was capable of existing at all. She posed upon them on a whim that they either serve her with their diminutive lives, or that they become dust scattered in her fur. For generations, humanity dutifully worshipped this titanic creature.

That was until she disappeared, dismissing herself from their realm for reasons unknown to them. In the three-thousand years of absence, humanity thrived without an oppressor, advancing quickly now that they could serve themselves. Before long, records of the sphinx were lost, until the gigantic creature was just a myth in the minds of modern society.

But the sphinx’s slumber had ended, and she stirred back into the realm without warning. She was upon humanity again, instantly reclaiming the earth with her awesome scale and shape. Her form as a sphinx was beyond human; a lion’s sturdy body admonished with eagle wings on the flanks, the quadruped body stoutly supporting that of the human torso. Her physique was impressive, boasting a slate of abs and a bosom barely bound by a white shawl. Golden necklaces and earrings accented her regal appeal, affirming her importance over that of her now-billions of subjects. A flood of cold black hair traveled down this human shape, every edge trimmed flat and evenly to create a truly divine and perfect appearance. The sphinx appeared as amazing then as she did thousands of years ago; only the energy in her eyes had changed, still weary from that long nap.

There was much for her to see, and consequently, much to do. As she tepidly held that metropolis in one paw, her gaze spread wide and far across the continent. Many squares as gray and ridged as the one she possessed dotted the landscape, a stark contrast to how contained and frail humanity was when she left. She glanced at the city again, amusement sharpening her lips; there were more people populating this one city than there had been across a nation from her ancient age.

“Fascinating developments, but at a steep cost,” the sphinx remarked, her idle musings spelling terror for those she held. A soft finger of a human hand grazed some of the roofs, causing the respective structures to collapse where it went. “You have forgotten your fragility, and have allowed your egos to expand like mold. How weak must your little minds be to forget your goddess?

“Mmm. Not a heartbeat of worship,” she sighed. “I am left with no choice but to declare my judgement.” Her paw curled, unopposed by the weight of a city and its varied districts and vast population. Everything crunched together in her grasp; survivors escaped with their lives between the pads of her paw, clinging to fur much like debris was tangled within it.

“Unfortunate, but there are so many of you to spare, isn’t there?” Her claw opened, allowing trails of dust to hail back onto the earth. She moved forward, her feline legs sweeping across miles of distance before hammering the landscape. Behind her, a long and heavy tail followed along, dragged in waving motions that haphazardly toppled lesser cities and towns. She would recognize this destruction with an over-the-shoulder look, and nothing more. “In fact, there are plainly too many of you now. Such a shame -- so many souls, yet none of you could continue worshipping your beloved goddess?”

A winding river that divided provinces lured the sphinx to a harbor town. All across the beaches of the continent were cities such as it, centers of commerce and trade where hundreds of ships gathered. The bustling activity that was routine for the coastal city, however, had been severely interrupted. As with the rest of the globe, the entire population was infatuated with reports of the sphinx, only for their dread to spiral into reality as they felt the onset of tremors. The people rushed outside, then rushed for refuge -- the sphinx was fast approaching, a paw soaring above a mountain range and cratering into the neighboring towns in a dramatic landing.

“Certainly a location such as this should be focal of spreading my greatness,” the sphinx declared, positioning herself in front of the city. The clouds were cleared by her entrance, allowing all those below to openly witness her divinity -- and her dissatisfied glare. “... No. Even here where so many humans must travel, not one remembers that they had a goddess to worship.”

From her grand and superior perspective, the sphinx analyzed how the numerous ships sailed about in the ocean. The feline ears that twitched atop her crown were especially keen at listening to the distress from these ships, magically inferring the panic and fear that swelled in the hearts of mankind. Truly, humanity had spread to effectively every corner of the world, infecting the planet with their lowly grime across its face -- and even the skies were unsafe from human invasion. As she monitored how society trembled in her wake, she noticed more than one airplane cross her path; an affront to the goddess, she decided, for these vehicles to boldly fly around her body.

Those inside the planes could not comprehend what insult they were invoking, even less could they comprehend the very goddess they were insulting. Pilots scrambled to readjust their trajectories in the presence of the massive, furry body, but their fates had already been decided. As one plane sped past the sphinx’s breasts, it was attacked, swamped by a fog of fingers that quickly consumed the vehicle in a single clench. Another plane buzzed behind her backside, rapidly descending for an emergency landing, when the monster’s tail suddenly whipped at their direction, its tip wider than their wingspan. An anticlimactic swat broke the plane entirely, nonchalantly scattering its remains and few survivors across her hide.

Without these bug-like distractions, the sphinx reaffirmed her stare onto the coastal city. Defenses had been deployed in a vain attempt of stopping her destruction. An army was mobilized, taking over both the streets and the seas in position for an all-out war. There was no hesitation from humanity as they unleashed every weapon they could in a full-on assault against whatever they could reach; pathetically, their best missiles could only soar high enough to hit her ankles, itching at her coat with explosions that would otherwise level communities. Gunfire pelted her paws and attack helicopters swarmed her legs, but their efforts went unnoticed by the beast.

“How significant do you think these nests of yours are?” the sphinx laughed, bending her knees down towards the city. The gravity of her hanging low created an intense pressure onto the province she stood upon. “These little towers must be so big and inspiring to you. You must not have realized you were building your homes out of dust -- it’s only fair I remind you.”

A playful swipe of her paw conjured a tidal wave of terrain to smother one half of the city. Her claw swept through fields of land and unleashed the ground it collected, tossing it carelessly over her target. She was playing with sand, as far as it concerned her, but the consequences on the city’s minuscule level were far more dire. Tens of thousands of lives were flipped over by the paw’s swing or otherwise crumbled in its path, the land itself weaponized in a splash attack against the rest of the city. Skyscrapers toppled while comet-like stones of bedrock hailed the roads, yet above it all was a hummed giggled, the catastrophe barely entertaining their lazy goddess.

With no respect for suspense, the sphinx continued with the city’s mass demolition, upheaving a paw from where it once pillared through hills and dropping it unceremoniously atop what remained. In the midst of windstorms billowing through the districts and avalanches of rubble piling over buildings, the casting of the paw’s shadow drew all eyes up to the round pad in the sky. It quickly consumed all they could see before crashing into the roofs, and then everything else -- all cries and sirens ceased in the wake of this thundering step.

The paw twisted, then curled through the ground. The sphinx tore away some of the land, including the beach that the city resided upon. As easily as that did she change the map, creating a claw-shaped rift that the ocean poured into to fill like a gulf. Countless ships were whipped into vortexes of watery movement, unable to overpower a current so cruel -- battleships equipped for warfare and cargo ships stocked with goods were all equally swallowed into the sea, and yet none of their pleas alerted the sphinx.

Her fascination was towards that of what lived on in the coil of her paw. She raised the ruins up to her eye level, the upwards movement causing the loosest debris to sift out of her grasp and rain across the beaches. She spied into the crumbled and crushed ball of earth, recognizing the remains of civilization with divine vision. Fires burned through garbage where they could, segments of buildings continued to collapse, but humanity miraculously persisted; survivors bunkered in fortunate places still clung to their lives within the paw, rewarded with a glowing stare from their goddess.

“Hmhm~ I’ve forgotten how resilient of a species you can be,” the sphinx murmured, casually putting her paw back onto the earth -- and smashing those survivors into nothingness as a result. She turned to face the broader continent, her hind legs and tail trampling across sweeps of land with no regard to the lives they ravaged, a trail of destruction ignorantly brought about across miles of distance. “There is no need to be so defensive anymore. Your goddess has returned~ You can rely on me again to protect you-- that is, once a few temples are resurrected.

“Until then… there are just too many of you. Quite the infestation…” The sphinx sighed as she surveyed the provinces, noting how so much of the world had changed since her sleep. “I do prefer when I can keep all of you contained. After all, there should be nothing worth living for other than your goddess. Such is the fate of things so small~”

There was no further explanation she was willing to grant human civilization. Directed towards a sprawl of land, the sphinx lifted her head and spread apart her eagle wings, the tips reaching through the clouds. The entire nation was horrified by the ominous visage that conquered the horizon; as the sun was setting just behind her, the furthest corners of the country could see just the silhouette of their goddess’s wide-spread wings surrounded by a sky of orange.

It meant nothing to the sphinx to then flap her wings, to conjure a gust that whipped across the nation. For her subjects, her decision made for terrible tornadoes that tore through the countryside, ripping apart unsuspecting towns with gales strong enough to lift away houses. Even the earth nearest to the sphinx was shoveled up by the howling winds she summoned, slinging the land forward and burying whatever life existed there. The effects of her attack stretched all the way to the opposite coastline, the air twisting violently within cities that were otherwise a day of travel away.

The sphinx gazed over the wasteland she had produced. The many dots and squares of human nests had been diminished to even more pathetic of a state, swallowed by a layer of unearthed dirt if not toppled over entirely by her wing’s thrusts. The scale of terror rivaled that of wars waged over years, but the sphinx’s destruction struck the continent in under an hour -- with minimal power did she re-conquer humanity, dispelling the arrogance of the species and returning them to their rightful place at her feet.

A warm smile met the horrified stares of millions of people, all direly awaiting for what wave of despair she would inflict upon them. “Ahh, sooner than I expected,” the goddess chimed, stepping forward through a range of mountains. “There’s worshipping happening… I can sense many of you willing to serve me. Perhaps some of you may not even realize you feel this way~”

Four paws rocketed past the peaks of mountains, one lunging through the snow caps and causing it to cascade to its base by accident. There was a city that allured her, the source of where this sense of worship arose. In no time at all did she cross over two provinces and appear before the citizens, introduced by thunder and tremors. Her divine vision allowed her to see the beautiful aspects of their society, and on a whim did she take a liking to the location. She decided she would defend it, and so her feline frame acted as a ring-shaped barrier after curling around the city’s borders. Her tail flicked into place, severing the freeways leaving town and thus entrapping the citizens. No matter where they turned, the sphinx’s body was there in some way, defining the new limits of their world.

“Yes, this feels familiar…” the sphinx hummed. “Your entire world, encircled by my reach… It’s much easier to tend to you humans that way. While the rest of the world is relieved of your excess, I will ensure this nest survives. Be grateful, humans, and serve me diligently, yes?” Like stroking a pet, she lowered a finger into the city, taking its little width and carving it through downtown. “I expect songs of my return to greet the night, and I expect you all to enjoy a feast in my name. There’s so much to celebrate, of course, now that your goddess has returned~”