by Jabbrwock (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

She had fallen through void and through flame and through the depths of the ocean, but now she was approaching land. She stepped up out of the water, naked and perfect as Aphrodite rising from the waves, up onto the beach. The tides of her blood-soaked passion for violence had receded, but not far. She looked around at the beach, seeking any sign of human presence, but found none. She listened, but heard only wildlife. She was alone, in a land she had never seen before, but she had no fear. She was, after all, a goddess now, and surely a goddess could go where she pleased in perfect safety.

She chose a direction at random, and took off running, her sprint blindingly fast, raising a sandstorm in her wake. As the sand settled, it buried her tracks, patches of sand that had been glazed to obsidian glass by the friction and force of her delicate-seeming footsteps.

A few minutes and perhaps a hundred miles later, she found herself approaching a barren, stony field littered with rocky debris fallen from a nearby cliff face. Most of the debris consisted of pebbles, but there were several larger boulders as well, ranging from a number as large as her head to one particularly impressive specimen the size of a house. She smiled slightly, imagining how easy it would be for her new body to lift that rock, throw it. . . even destroy it. Her smile intensified as she slowed and stopped. Why settle for imagination? she decided, and looked around at her options.

Best to start small, she decided, and stepped up to a roundish boulder that was probably not much larger than she was, although it surely weighed more. Lifting it proved harder than she had imagined, not because it was heavy -- in fact, it felt practically weightless -- but because she was so much lighter than it. Her first few tries ended with her ignominously losing her footing and falling flat on her face, her spectacular anatomy unharmed, even if her dignity was somewhat bruised. Finally, however, she figured the trick of levering the rock up, getting herself under it, and lifting it straight overhead.

She moved on to other, larger rocks, lifting each easily now that she had the trick of it, until she came to an odd-shaped, longish rock that was probably the size of a smallish war galley. She kept losing her grip, until, suddenly, with an explosive cracking sound, the boulder shattered under the combined stress of her delicate-seeming grip and its own weight. Jagged edged shards of rock went flying, pelting everything nearby, including her, with a rain of razor-sharp stone, flying with such force that they might have been launched from a siege engine such as her father's artificiers sometimes made in war time.

"Mmmmm!" she purred in pleasure, enjoying the deadly caress against her ultra-sensitive body. "That was nice!"

She reached down and hefted one of the shards, a jagged piece as long as her forearm, and experimentally rubbed it across her stomach. The rough texture was a pure delight to feel, and she excitedly began to rub herself elsewhere, enjoying the sensation of hard stone being worn smooth by silky-smooth, flawless, invulnerable skin.

Her exploratory strokes soon reached her breasts, and her movements took on a frenetic speed as she eagerly stimulated her hard, erect nipples with the last jagged edge of the stone. All too soon, the friction wore away, and that surface was smooth and polished as the rest.

Continuing to tease her eager nipples with one hand, she examined what remained of her stone toy. Quite a lot remained, actually, her invulnerable skin had done an admirable job of polishing away the rough surfaces, leaving it finely polished and finished, without removing much of its core material. What it looked like, more than anything, was. . .

Quick as a flash, she followed the thought, sitting abruptly on the stony ground, spreading her beautifully sculpted legs, and rubbed her new stone dildo down her torso to her crotch. As her sweet-scented nectar began to flow freely, she eagerly caressed her inner thighs with the now-moist phallus, running it in ever decreasing arcs past her intimate folds.

Finally, unable to stand the growing tension, her nipples and breasts now glowing incandescently hot from friction, and her juices beginning to steam as the heat of her growing passion kindled within her, she repositioned her toy and inserted it into her eagerly waiting pussy. The sensation of something other than her own fingers within her was deliciously stimulating, and she felt her climax approaching as she began to push it deeper, when suddenly, it stopped.

Frustration and eagerness warred, as she moved her toy within herself, trying to find a way past the unseen obstruction. Then, as her need approached its peak, she clenched her inner muscles, crushing it to powder within her, her now empty hand rushing to fill the gap. The slurry of her juices and the sand that was all that remained of the hard granite dildo she had crafted gave her eager strokes a delightful new edge of fricion, and in a fraction of a second, she reached her peak, crying out in the ecstasy of release.

Her first conscious thought as she lay back, basking in the afterglow, was to realize what the obstruction had been. She was an intact virgin, never penetrated by a man, and now her invulnerable barrier would forever prevent any man from taking her virginity. Too bad for them! she thought idly, and then, Or perhaps not. A mortal man would have fared even worse than her sculpture of stone, subjected to the superhuman forces of her insatiable lust. Perhaps the real tragedy is that no man can survive my passion long enough to enjoy it!

As the resounding drumbeat of her pulse declined enough that the pebbles nearby no longer shook in sympathy, she looked over at the enormous boulder she had seen earlier. It was more compact, an almost square block, really, than her last effort, and she thought she might be able to lift it without breaking it. In any case, it might be amusing to try, and with that in mind, she stepped over to one edge, bent down, and began to lift.

This massive stone outcrop was far heavier than any of the others she had tried. She felt the weight in every muscle of her body, though she could tell that it was not taxing her reserves of strength in the slightest. With careful precision, she painstakingly walked herself over toward the center of the cavity formed by the rock's immense weight, seeking the balance point where she could lift it in her slender, feminine, irresistably powerful arms.

Finally, she thought she had the right point. With a delicately calculated precision, she managed to lift the enormous block of stone over her head, her feet spread shoulder-wide for additional balance, her fingers digging their own grips in the seemingly soft stone, her chest heaving in excitement at the evidence of her incredible power.

She felt the boulder start to shift, and tried to take a small step to keep her balance, when everything fell apart. Her hands had crushed their way to a hidden fault in the stone, and with an ominous ripping sound, half of the rock fell away behind her. Suddenly relieved of half of their load, her arms shot up and out, throwing the immense boulder high in the air, the recoil forcing her body back into the fallen half of the boulder. She stood back up and shook her head, waist length hair flying in a silken cloud about her, before looking up to see where the other half had gone.

Eyes far keener than those of any bird of prey easily tracked the flying stone, and she took off at a run, idly wondering whether she could catch up to the huge block and catch it. She had just crested a ridge perhaps a quarter-mile from where she thought the boulder would land when she saw the village.

It was an unimpressive place, crudely made from wood and straw, and the people were strange looking indeed, with features like the traders from the far orient she had occasionally seen at her father's court, and odd colored, reddish-brown skin. She had a moment to notice the finely cured leather they used for clothing, apparently lacking any kind of woven fabric, when the boulder she had hurled landed.

It could hardly have been planned to cause more devastation. Its flattish trajectory had ended at one end of the village, and it bounced back up, smashing straight through buildings, crushing all in its path, until it slammed into a stone outcropping at the far edge and exploded into a thousand shards, which tore through all in their path in a spreading wedge of destruction. The small hamlet had been utterly devastated by the single massive boulder, most of its population wounded or dead, all of its buildings damaged or destroyed in an eyeblink.

Up on the top of the ridge, Nyx raised one dainty hand to her mouth, lips curving in a slight smile, and murmered, "Oops! Did I do that?" before bursting into a fit of giggles at the accidental devastation her play had caused. Without giving the devastated village a backward glance, she took off running again, reveling in her unbelievable power now revealed in yet another awesome way, not even considering that something might be wrong with her that she felt not even a scrap of guilt or remorse at the slaughter of the villagers and the destruction of their homes.

As she ran, she began to fantasize about the possibilities of her power, her beauty, and her immense passion. It seemed a horrible tragedy that no man could ever hope to pleasure her, or hope to survive if he did. She imagined the feel of hands as powerful as her own, muscles as hard and taut as those that moved her, a passion as insatiable as that which burned within her mind and body, and felt a deep regret.

No man could possibly. . . she thought, and was struck by a sudden burst of insight. No mortal man could satisfy her, but what about an immortal?

Zeus, according to all she had learned and heard, was hardly averse to dalliance with mortals. Nor, for that matter, were the other gods. Here she stood, with beauty far beyond any mere mortal maiden, beauty easily a rival for Aphrodite or Athena, so where was Zeus? Where were Hermes or Ares or any of the rest of them? Heracles, according to legend, might even have strength to match her own, why wasn't he here?

She gathered her breath, and shouted with earth-shaking force, "Zeus! Heracles! Ares, Hermes, any of you! Here I am, what are you waiting for?"

As the echoes of her cry faded into the distance, she waited, hands on hips, half expecting an Olympian visitor to show up right then. After a few minutes, however, she sighed disgustedly and began to run again.

"Gods!" she muttered. "What use are they? They didn't help me when I was a prisoner being tortured, and Zeus knows I was praying for help then. And they won't help now, when I know full well they'd enjoy it as much as I would. How did they get to be in charge anyway? I could do a better job than them, easily! I could. . . "

A delighted smile spread over her face as she completed the thought. "I could be a goddess. No, I am a goddess. Aphrodite, Artemis, Athena. . . beware! Nyx is coming!"

She began to rough out her plan as she ran. First, I need worshippers, she decided. No need to be picky at first, any old village, even that one she had devastated with her boulder would do. Well, perhaps not that one, she'd rather have a village full of worshippers who were alive. Although, she considered, Dead worshippers could help me get a presence in Hades' realm. No reason not to take over the land of the dead as well as the realm of the living.

She stopped running for a moment, expanding her awareness of all her newfound super-senses. Sight, sound, and smell all combined to give her an incredibly detailed understanding of the world for miles in every direction. After a few seconds, she sorted the impressions, and took off toward the village she knew was only a few miles away.

The people were hunters, rather than farmers, living on the wild-growing produce of the land, but their settlement seemed prosperous, made with skill and cunning, if not with the advanced techniques she remembered from her Mediterranean homeland. They seemed racially similar to the residents of the village she had destroyed a few minutes ago, but more advanced, or perhaps it was only that the village was larger, with more people available to allow a specialist in a particular craft to achieve the pinnacle of skill in his area of expertise.

She slowed to a walk suitable for mere mortals as she passed the outer boundary of the settlement, smiling in satisfaction at the exclamations of surprise as, to the people of the village, it seemed that she had simply appeared from nothing at the edge of their town. With infinite, arrogant confidence in her irresistable beauty and awesome strength, she stepped proudly along the path to what she judged was the central gathering place for the villagers, where elders and hunt leaders and other people of rank would be found.

They noticed her well before she reached them, a gathering of men and women whose clothes showed more than the common amount of decorative bead- and quill-work, mostly seeming to be of middle age and older. One, the man she thought might be the overall leader, wore an elaborate feathered headdress that made him seem to tower over the tiny Minoan girl, but she knew that his height was no compensation for her unbelievable power and beauty. With a gasp she imagined to signify awe, he stepped forward, to prostrate himself in worship of her divine perfection, and she stopped her approach and waited, hands on her hips, proudly displaying herself to her new worshippers.

When he reached her, however, he did not prostrate himself, did not bow or kneel. Instead, he reached out one weathered hand to admiringly caress the soft curve of her full, impossibly firm breasts.

She did not think. She did not have time to think. The insult to her dignity was too deep, to intolerable, for anything but instantaneous reaction. Without the tiniest hesitation, she reached one slim hand up, grasped his offending forearm, and wrenched it from his shoulder. As he began to scream in pain and horror, she tossed the mangled limb aside and, with her other hand, struck him square in the chest, shattering his sternum and shredding his heart and lungs. He was dead before he hit the ground.

The sudden wash of the savage joy of bloodshed caused her to draw a breath in a pant of startled pleasure. Her eyes glazed slightly, seeming to become violet pools of almost glowing intensity, as her nipples stiffened and her loins quickened with arousal and excitement.

She was enjoying the scent of her excited state when the remaining warriors of the village rushed her with whatever weapons they could quickly gather. With an eager smile, she waded in, hungry for the prospect of bloodshed and mayhem.

Almost as quickly as it had begun, the fight was over, the village full of men and women made hard and strong by a life wrested from the resisting produce of nature no match for the girl made infinitely harder and stronger by the blessing of alien science. The pleasure of the fight was sharp and intense, matching her earlier orgasm in intensity, and she had no regrets that her first attempt to gather worshippers had ended in a slaughter. The violent ecstasy she had experienced had easily been worth it, in her mind, and in any case, there were surely many potential worshippers.

Besides, she thought, as she turned to race off in search of another village, All gods and goddesses require sacrifices from their worshippers. Why shouldn't I?

Her optimism hadn't faded several days later, as she ran across a veritable frozen wasteland far to the north of the beach where she had waded ashore. She had found no worshippers capable of perceiving the immense honor and privilege she had offered them by allowing them to worship her divinity. She had, however, taken intense pleasure in the destruction of the several dozen villages she had found unworthy of that same honor and privilege.

Several had, like the first, taken unwarranted liberties with her person. A few, encouraged by their shaman, had attacked her instantly, in an attempt to drive off what they assumed was an evil spirit, a demon-woman come to steal their souls. Two had seemed, at least at first, to understand her magnificent beauty and power, and to wish to properly revere her person. That illusion had lasted no longer than the few hours it had taken her to absorb their languages and hear what they said about her when they thought she couldn't hear or understand.

Muttered imprecations about her arrogance. Vile implications about her character. Complaints about her capriciousness. They had no true reverence for her magnificence!

Killing them had been too kind, really. But once the violence started, she could never seem to stop until she had sated her bloodlust on every nearby target. Still, she remained optimistic. Feeling as good, no, as wonderful as she felt, it was impossible not to be optimistic. In any case, she was starting to wonder what possible pleasure she could get from having worshippers that could possibly compete with the intense rush of killing them.

Her wanderings have taken her far north and west of the sandy beach where she had come ashore. Now the land was cold, frozen solid beneath her feet, and she found herself wondering what the locals could possibly find to eat. She knew they found something, for she had encountered human footprints several times. She was following one set right at the moment, and by the scent in the air, she was getting close.

In the distance now, she could see them, a band of hunters armed with long spears tipped with the finest chipped stone spearpoints she had seen. Even from her position several miles distant, she could see each almost gem-like point glistening in the pale sunlight. She had never seen tools of chipped stone tools before she had come to this strange land, but had seen all manner of them since she arrived, and these were the finest examples she had seen, at least as far as her untrained eye could perceive. Each was broad, razor-edged, and almost as long as her forearm, the marks of their making seeming more like facets of a beautifully carved jewel than the scars of the tools that had made them. And she could also see the creatures they had been made to hunt.

She had seen an Elephant, once, in a traveling menagerie her father had brought to Crete for some celebration or another, and had been suitably impressed by its size, power, and bizarre, long, prehensile nose. These creatures were somewhat similar in appearance, but even larger, and covered with long, shaggy hair. They were easily the most freakish looking creatures she had ever seen, even including the strange crocodile-demons she had encountered when she had been held prisoner before her change. And these mere mortals were hunting them!

With excited curiosity, she watched the distant spectacle, seeing as clearly as if she were right in among the hunters. They were cutting one of the creatures off from the herd, carefully using torches to direct it without spooking the entire herd. Then, when the one was far enough from the rest, they would surround it, and hurl those beautifully made spears at it, hoping to open wide gashes in its hide and let it bleed to death.

She almost laughed at the excessive effort of the whole affair. She could dispatch one, or a hundred, of the strange elephant-creatures with a fraction of the power held within one small finger, and these mortals had to make such a production of hunting a single one. She fought the urge to run over and help them out for a fraction of a second before she took off running into the fray.

Her first blow seemed to come from nowhere, shattering the skull of the creature the hunters were actively stalking with a single easy blow. Instantly, the rest of the herd, smelling blood, spooked and stampeded away, the force of the many immense creatures' rushing footsteps shaking the earth as much as the force of her own inhuman passion had done. The comparison aroused her interest, and without so much as a glance at the hunters she had been hunting, she raced with supernatural speed after the herd, leaving the confused hunters to wonder if they had seen reality or some strange, enticing vision, and if a vision, what had killed their prey for them?

She easily outpaced

She spent days looking for more of the shaggy elephant-creatures before she had to concede with regret that they were all dead. Hunting them had been fun, much more so than killing human beings, humans were so feeble. Of course, compared to her incomparable might, even the massive elephant-creatures were feeble, but they were at least more impressive than people.

Almost a match for those scaly demons. . . she mused, and tried to figure out what to do next. The thought brought something to mind, something that had been nagging her for days, something familiar, but strangely out of place. It was nothing she heard or saw, but. . . she sniffed, sorting the various impressions that greeted her nose, and gasped in shock: demon scent!

She quickly darted upwind, seeking any sign of the source. The scaled demons were no threat to her, of course. She had slaughtered hordes of them in her former prison, shattering their crocodilian bodies without effort as their pathetic weapons completely failed to so much as inconvenience her. Still, she held them responsible for the indignity of her abduction and captivity, and killing any of them she found down on Earth would be a pleasure far exceeding the savage ecstacy of simple blood-lust.

When she caught up with them a few minutes later, they were plainly massing for an attack, and equally plainly unaware of her presence. They were preparing to rush a simple village populated by the red-skinned locals. Not considering the fact that she had depopulated dozens of villages far larger than this one in the days since she had waded ashore, she felt filled with righteous indignation at the thought of demons attacking a human village.

How dare they attack my people?! she thought furiously, and simultaneously, You'd think they'd know better than to meddle with humans after what happened with me!

With those two thoughts, she stepped into the fray. She didn't rush, not by her standards, but she had still destroyed three of the demons before the rest had even noticed her presence. These might be the only demons she'd ever meet again, and she wanted to relish the experience of their comparatively strong bodies being effortlessly obliterated by her unstoppable strength.

In an idle moment, she took the time to consult her memory, and realized that these were the same demons she had been fighting in the final chamber of her prison, before the wall opened outward and dumped them all into the empty void. She recognized them by the patterns of their scales, although she had scarcely even bothered to look at them as individuals at their first meeting. Remembering the brutal heat that had buffeted her as she fell to earth, she was impressed anew by the durability of the scaled demonhide that protected them; she hadn't realized they were that tough, considering how easily she had defeated them.

She was defeating them easily now, as well. As before, their hell-light weapons were utterly ineffective, although she was careful to avoid moving so fast that they couldn't aim them accurately. The sensual warmth they evoked in her skin was a perfect complement to the vicious joy of mayhem unleashed.

She was lost in a bloody orgy of destruction, an ecstacy that was nearly sexual in its intensity, right up until the moment when the last demon died, her slender fist smashing through its scaled chest, bursting its heart and lungs in passing.

She almost sobbed in frustration. "Is that all?" she moaned, wishing there were something, anything, she could do to prolong her pleasure.

At that moment, she heard cheering. The villagers had gathered their warriors, armed with stone spears and clubs to face the demons, but their war-party was not merely far smaller than its demonic counterpart, but infinitely weaker individually. They had had no chance at all until the strange, incredibly powerful and divinely beautiful woman had appeared, seemingly from nowhere, to lay waste to their enemies. An impromptu celebration was breaking out, and the leader of the warriors, a middle-aged man whose leather outfit was decorated with feathers and elaborate beadwork, stepped forward to give thanks to the savior of his village.

Nyx looked up at him as she heard him speak. She couldn't understand a word he was saying, but his tone sounded friendly. Before she could even begin to respond to his tone, other concerns pre-empted her action. Frustration and aroused blood-lust moved her faster than she could think to override her impulses, and as had happened with every other human population she had encountered, she erupted in violence.

The war-chief was first, of course, but before the villagers could even notice his fall, she had destroyed the returning war-party and moved into the village itself. Men, women, and children fell before her lust for destruction, and she spared none in her drive to maximize her pleasure. Most of the village itself was torn apart by the simple shockwaves of her blows and the wind of her passage.

She came to herself standing in front of a single hut that had somehow escaped the destruction. She was bent over, hands on upper thighs, breath coming in shallow pants of pleasure. The violence had increased her sexual awareness as well, and she was pleasantly conscious of the moist warmth between her thighs and the tight throbbing of her hard, erect nipples. Quickly enough, she recovered a measure of equilibrium, and curiously stepped into the primitive building to examine its contents.

Her nose had already revealed the scent of well-cured leather, polished wood, and cooking supplies. The furnishings, while scant and crude, seemed well-made of their kind, but that wasn't what caught her attention. Propped atop a simple ledge against the wall was a mirror.

It was nothing fancy, that mirror, merely an oval of polished silver as wide as her forearm and twice as tall. It was astonishingly well made, and she guessed that it must have been traded from some more sophisticated people to serve as a decoration in the home of the most prominent family of the village. Most fascinatingly of all, however, was that it reflected her image.

She had not seen herself reflected in anything more accurate than a pool of water since she had escaped from the prison cell where she had been held until she gained her immense new powers and escaped. Her appearance was just as captivating as she remembered, however.

Her face was a lovely heart-shape, sculpted by high cheekbones and wide, startlingly violet eyes that seemed to glow with an inner light. Her full, sensuous lips were arched in a small smile of pleasure at the sight of her beauty, and her small nose and delicate but willful chin completed the image of perfect beauty that greeted her. Her face was framed by an astonishingly thick and silky waist-length flow of glistening, perfectly black hair, falling over her shoulders and across her full, firm, perfectly shaped breasts. She raised her hands and gathered hair momentarily into a tail, revealing her perky, intensely red, throbbingly erect nipples as the movement of her finely toned arms lifted her breasts slightly.

Following some impulse she couldn't name, she looked gravely at her reflection, and said, "Funny, you don't look like a monster."

Something about the comment struck her as hilariously funny, and she laughed uproariously, the sound of her gales of laughter shaking the hut around her, knocking the mirror to the floor. She found herself kneeling over it, wondering why there were tears streaming down her reflection's face to pool on the mirror's surface, when she finally realized what she had done.

Every person she had killed, every village she had destroyed, ever face was preserved with vivid intensity and crystal clear accuracy in her flawless memory. Guilt and remorse, built up over the course of her weeks-long rampage of death and destruction, had finally built up enough to remind her of the difference between good and evil. Her conscience had finally battered its way through the armor of euphoric super-health and exalted super-power to strike at the soul of the mortal girl who still remained at the heart of the new goddess.

For hours, the divinely beautiful, mythically powerful girl cried with heart-wrenching sobs of grief and remorse. No sweet oblivion of sleep could give her solace, nor would her perfect memory allow her to ever forget what she had done. Every face she had victimized would haunt her for the rest of her long life, mercilessly accusing her of crimes she could never deny. Even the final mercy of death was denied her, for she could conceive of no force powerful enough to harm her. Her powerful body shook with guilt and shame, as she softly whimpered, "What have I become?"

"What have I become?"

To be continued. . .