Rick's POV:
Three days ago, I fired my last 2 rounds at my brother and an Amazon worrier. She was but a single fighter in the Horde that broke through the trench lines, the many Titans who toppled over the artillery positions and the bunkers, the Behemoths and Amazons who flanked our ranks and broke the little discipline that was left by just that action.
But she is the one I will remember. With her spear in hand she jumped over the trench ahead of us and pierced it through my brother’s left shoulder. His favourite side. Chaos was at its peak. Many were still trying to comprehend what had hit them. The 10-foot woman, dressed in Imperial-coloured leather protection, a spear with an iron head and nerves of steel, had fallen on top of Christopher’s torso.
Her weight combined with the stormy weather had caused him to sink deep into the mud. The woman removed the spear from his flesh and howled a haunting, terrifying battle cry. My brother, the fighter he was, pushed himself up with his elbows. Even when knowing he would die at her hands, his defiance of the Giantess and his killer-instinct took over his senses.
But just before he could reach for the pin of his only remaining grenade, she tossed the spear away and broke his arm by snapping it like a twig. There were many cries all around me, but his I heard above all others. As the stories went, just what my gut was telling me, is that she would not let him die there. Not today, not tomorrow.
I couldn’t let him be taken by her, or anyone else. I aimed and shot my brother’s skull apart. Within a second, she rushed at me and I hit the side of her head. She collapse like a truck.
I barely made it to the evacuations. I entered the truck, and left the trenches where I had spent the last 10 months with many friends. Friends whom I haven’t seen returned. The trenches were the final defense we had before the South African border; the place most of us called home.
It had been the best stalling of the Empire’s advantage for years in the Imperial-African war. Many waves of Giantess Hordes and counter moves had been suppressed, or gave them but a pyrrhic victory that won the Giantesses but a few hundred yards. But then High-Commander Amanda Heuvel re-appeared on the scene with her own personal squad of advanced soldiers.
I had only heard tales of them cutting through lines of the best soldiers Great Britain, Oceania, Japan and Africa had to offer. I had even seen a glimpse of her: it was before the fog appeared on the battlefield, and all soldiers swore they saw a silhouette in the distance. Through my tactical binoculars I witnessed the legend herself. The ‘giant’ Giantess.
Tales spoke of a Giantess twice as tall and thrice as strong as a Titan. Others told that there were more of them. Three, six, seven, eight even. Most had come to know them by the name the Empire called them: ‘Colossals’; the Empire’s new monster. These are the seven commanders, with Amanda Heuvel as the commander of all Imperial armies.
It was no surprise that the armies couldn’t hold out twelve hours against all the forces combined, as it had previously only been groups of the army we were defending against. But now it’s different: the armies have come together and are mowing through everything that stands in their way, and leaving only fire, death and complete destruction and annihilation behind them.
As the small remaining portion of the Allied army withdraws towards Johannesburg-Pretoria, we see the masses; proletarians and politicians alike, screaming and running nowhere for the army that is coming nearer towards Botswana’s capital. Only a few hundred thousand have in the last 10 months been able to seek refuge in Johannesburg-Pretoria, Bloemfontein and especially Cape Town.
Cape Town is the best defensible position the Allies have in South Africa. A fort that surrounds the entire city and topples any Titan twice. But none of that matters now that Amanda Heuvel is at the scene. My only hope is that my children; Shani with her beautiful mark and Chris, whom I named after my brother Christopher, and my wife Linda manage to be amongst those who are evacuated out of the continent.
It was the plan to get the remaining soldiers to Johannesburg-Pretoria and Cape Town, but only half made it there. As I’m writing this now, I’m hiding with the remainder of my platoon in the dense man-made forest just south of the South-African border. It was made to render the Giantesses’ movement and sight.
It has served us well for now; we are being chased by at least thirty Titans. They probably are a single platoon or a group. We know of only a handful of soldiers who made it. The rest has been shattered by the thousands of Titans who had waited for us to come. Now that the only ones uncaught have fled into the many forests, they have sent the Amazons and Behemoths to find and catch us. Just an hour ago we killed at least thirty and lost half our platoon.
I am so, so terribly afraid. Not for death: but rather I fear for the Giantesses. Their size and strength alone have made armies surrender. When they find us, I hope I will end as a speck of blood under one of their feet. From close have I seen what they do to those they catch alive. They will eat their prey alive, use them as toys, torture them or place them in terrible sadistic… ‘places’, to take them home. It is the reason I killed my brother: this way he wouldn’t have been found by a Titan, or taken as a spoil of war by the same Amazon that overmastered him. I had no choice.
“Robertson, behind you!”
South-African Private Robertson heard trees behind him snap into bits. He could feel her enormous presence behind him. As he looked around, still sitting down with paper and pen in hand, he coldly looked at the dozens of Titans that had sneaked up behind him and his fellow soldiers.
They wore nothing but paint to serve as camouflage in the forest, their breasts and hair waving freely. His curious mind wondered how they could have sneaked up on them in such a stealthy fashion. The other soldiers too sat or stood motionless, with cold expressions covering their faces. He slowly lost grip of his pen and paper, which softly hit the muddy ground below him. How could something so enormous have sneaked up on him?
From all the Giantesses that crept closer, his mind is set on only one. How, he doesn’t know, but he simply knows the high general, the Colossal Amanda Heuvel is preying behind him. As he feels the urgency to swallow his nerves away, he is suddenly hit by a warm and sticky liquid that knocks him to the ground. The slime pins him at first to the ground.
He squirms around in an attempt to break free, and after a few seconds he manages free himself from the goo. He looks over his shoulder and sees two enormous -bigger than he had ever seen- legs sitting in a squatting position, with all balance weighing on the end of her feet. Her hands relaxed over her knees, and as he looked up, he saw the single largest Giantess he had ever seen up close or from afar.
The woman, he knew was centuries old, had stopped aging during her early to mid-thirties. I look around, and saw the setting had already changed in those few mere seconds. Robertson saw several of his fellow soldiers had disappeared, and the looks on those who remained were even more terrified than first. ‘Where did they go?’ He wondered.
Private Robertson noticed the Giantesses talking to each other, but was unable to understand their language. He still looked amazed at her sheer size: surely she was twice as big as the Titans that surrounded her?
He looked once more, for a final time, at his comrades, who were all lifted up one by one, and met different faiths. A good amount was quickly munched them up like peanuts; others disappeared in very light bags they carried around, others were placed and locked inside pockets that were attached to belts some of them wore. And then it was Robertson’s turn. Just before he would become a possible dish for the Colossal Giantess who had already wrapped her fingers around his body, he thought of his son, his daughter, his wife, and hoped they would be spared this faith.