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Once upon a time, in the icy northern reaches of the Equestrian continent, there was a pony of epic proportions. One of the legendary Titans that seemed to spawn from nature itself. She had no name and her exact size was uncertain. She spent all her time stalking the various mountain passes and canyons of the frozen wastelands. Few travelers and explorers dared those paths. Not because of her, but due to the extreme weather that made any excursion extremely dangerous. Most who went into the north caught a glimpse of her, if only from a distance. And the very few who had met her described the encounter as a spiritual one. Life changing. Hence the foundations of her legend were set.
Like all Titans, the mare of the north remained nameless and did not appear to age despite the passage of several hundred years. Those who spoke to her returned with stories of a serene giant who had no interest in harming them and, though mildly curious, appeared determined not to be a part of the wider world. A rarity for Titans. She was, however, truly massive. Possibly the largest of the Titans. "I'd estimate her hooves were as wide as any highway and I couldn't even guess her height," one lucky traveler would say.
Her fur was exceptionally thick, more like a yak's than a pony's, and was a mint green when it wasn't coated in snow. Her seaweed colored mane was long and wild. Her eyes were a deep amber yellow that many claimed actually glowed. Like all Titans she had no cutie mark and she rarely showed any emotions on her face.
For over 300 years she was simply the peaceful Titan of the north. An oddity that didn't generate much of a crowd only thanks to the harsh conditions that would have to be endured to see her. So she remained a legend. A large but quiet wanderer of the most brutal region on the continent. What she ate and how she stayed warm were hotly debated mysteries. Was her Titan fur really enough to stave off the cold? Most Titans were sustained by powerful mana flows that circled the world. Was she feeding off a huge mana vein that cut through the frozen north? Was that why she was the largest Titan ever seen?
All these things were argued between scholars in great universities and by patrons sharing a pint in cozy taverns. The peaceful Titan.
The Crystal Empire. A city that had vanished long ago as a result of a powerful curse. A curse that had finally lifted and freed the long forgotten inhabitants. Its return was like an earthquake that rocked the north, changing the landscape in ways that weren't entirely obvious to the common pony.
Sombra, the originator of the curse, was dead. A new couple ascended to the throne in the city of crystals. There was much to celebrate. There was music. And lights. And change. The city was back and it was time to expand in the new era.
Ponies from across the continent moved in. The Empire began to bulge with new residents. They built new homes. They pushed back the snow. The crystal ponies revealed to the world an ancient technique for fighting off the cold and making a bubble of habitation possible. So civilization began to encroach upon the north.
But everypony forgot one thing. The only peaceful Titan in the world was born just outside the reach and bustle of civilization. And in that isolation she had never found a reason to harm another deliberately...
The Titan loved the song of the wind. The art of the stars. Solitude was her blanket. Against the endless storms of ice she never felt the chill the tiny ones described. They had always been a unique curiosity. She had known them all her life as odd little distractions. The occasional visit was not entirely unwanted, though the questions were always the same. They repeatedly asked her boring mundane things. But if their babbling could be endured she could eventually ask her own questions. Though hers were always the same too, she consistently got new engrossing answers.
The little ones would describe such strange things to her. Cities. Magic. Rivers of flowing water? She tended to learn more in a single visit if she sheltered them from the wind. They usually said her fur was warm and acted like that was a compliment instead of the simple observation it was. The small ones were certainly strange. Delicate. And now annoying.
The Titan spent much of her time patrolling the snow-blanketed landscape. Though she had walked every path a hundred times before she was no closer to growing tired of the journey. With the song of the wind in her ears and the beauty of the stars above, the Titan was always calm. She had never experienced a truly strong emotion in her life. Hers was a quiet existence. Then came the Horizon Glow.
That far north, the sun only barely set and the moon only barely rose. It was a land of perpetual twilight and dusk. There was no real day or night. There was always a shadow of darkness. You could always look up and see the stars. But the Horizon Glow was like the beginning of an infection. A space in the distance where the stars were blurred away. Not hidden by a mountain. Not drowned out by the sun. But permanently lost to a competing light. Destroyed by the little ones.
And the noise. The music. It was far from constant, but for a mare who had experienced so few changes to her world since the day of her birth, it was a violation. An offense. Whenever she was content in her serenity it would strike at the very edges of her perception. The trumpets and drums and cymbals and singing. So much racket echoing through the many canyons and passes. Invading her calm. Some kind of... attack?
For a time the Titan tried to ignore it all. Her world was still much as it had always been. Until the visitors started to come more frequently. Like they were hunting her now.
At most she saw one tiny a year and visits only lasted a day or two. Now, only a short time after the appearance of the Horizon Glow, the visitors became almost constant. Every month she saw one of the small ones crossing her lands. Wasn't it "too cold" for them? A few discussions with this new swarm of little ones soon explained it all. An ancient city, from before even herself, had returned. And it was expanding towards her lands.
For the first time in 300 years the Titan was shocked. Forced to think long, deep, and hard. More small ones wasn't necessarily bad. She decided whether they spoke to her or not. If she didn't want to talk to them she merely had to ignore them and move on. They were so little and slow. Though she usually chose to talk to them if she noticed them. But the stars and the wind... her peace...
More and more she stood on mountain tops staring into the distance. Not at the sky, but at the Horizon Glow. It was getting bigger. Closer too. The tiny ones had also described to her these things called "Holidays". Celebrations when they would unleash their horrible music. Tainting the wind with artificial notes. That was getting louder too. More ponies, more instruments. The invasion was steadily underway.
Fear. It was the first time she had felt it. Fear of change. Fear for the loss of her world.
Denial. They wouldn't spread this far. They hadn't before.
Anger. They were thieves. Little thieves trying to steal her peace.
She had to act. She would stop them. These were her lands and she would not surrender them by doing nothing. She knew how. The small ones lived in "homes" which made up a large portion of "cities". With the passage of so many years the Titan had learned that everything, besides herself, was delicate. Whether it was a tree or a layer of ice, both shattered at her mere touch. These "homes" would be no different. If they had no way to stay warm they couldn't invade her world.
She was under attack and she would defend herself.
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Despite her decision the giant green mare hesitated. She waited. Did she really have to fight them? Maybe all they had done would simply be undone if she were more patient. These thoughts did not last long as the attempted visitors became ever more frequent. Eventually she just could not endure it any more.
The largest of the Titans, the peaceful giant of the north, began stomping toward the Horizon Glow.
Each step was punctuated by a crash as her hooves cut into the snow and mud and left an obvious trail in her wake. She was not following any road. She was angry. And sad. And saw no reason to let anything obstruct her journey. Her course was straight. If a hill was in the way she climbed it. If there was a river she walked right through. A collection of evergreen trees were turned to splinters as she marched over them. The tallest of trees were only as high as her knees and the rest were barely noticeable. She had a place to be and something to do. Nothing else mattered.
The Horizon Glow was still a bit away when she finally came across... farms? The land had clearly been flattened and there were rows and rows of some kind of trees or bushes. There were little paths circling and cutting across the many fields that might as well been pencil lines on a piece of paper to the Titan. There were buildings too. Grouped by twos and threes. They were also tiny compared to her. All of them were shorter than her fetlocks and only a few were longer than her hooves were wide. That is to say the majority could fit comfortably under a single foot.
The Titan paused for a moment as she looked down upon this place, the outermost claim of civilization. Should she destroy these buildings? She wasn't sure. Were these homes? She knew about crops and the importance of food, but was it worth the effort to trample this huge area of tilled land? Or were the densely packed homes of the city more important? She argued with herself for what felt like a while before deciding against it. She was wasting time. The city was her target.
But just because she had decided not to hunt the little farm houses did not mean she watched her step.
The Titan's enormous hooves pulverized crops into the ground and left gaping holes that would take weeks for families to fill. Her steps unleashed earthquakes that rattled the little homes and their residence and sent many ponies racing outside. Only to gape at the passing form that towered above them. The mass that was the Titan's mane and tail made it hard to comprehend what they were looking at in the darkness of the night. Some of the farm houses were very unlucky. One home had the misfortune to be exactly in the way of one of the huge mare's careless hooves. The building didn't even seem to put up a fight. The entire structure simply disappeared and its occupants never knew more than a few of the tremors before sudden darkness took them.
The Titan was getting closer. The city was just past another hill. No. Not the city proper. The suburban sprawl. It was such an alien sight. These were definitely homes. Each one was separated from the next on all sides by an amount of space roughly equal to the size of the home itself. Yards. Small fenced off areas around each tiny box of wood where a pony or pony family lived. Roads a bit wider than the ones she had seen in the outskirts, more like marker lines than pencil, curved every which way. The homes and the yards around them were aligned with the twisting black road in blocks of development. Most of the homes ended up with another home at its back, facing the road that curved around the other side at some point. Making it even more confusing, the road also cut across itself numerous times. Some kind of pattern?
The Titan paused to consider the strange design. Did it have a meaning? A purpose? She had never seen anything that compared. It was like one of those mazes a visitor had once described to her. Yet there did not seem to be an entrance or an exit. The mess of connections seemed endless as it kept diverging and converging with itself over and over. Worse, there were so many of the tiny box homes. Hundreds of them leading all the way to the Horizon Glow which had now become a single great light just ahead of her.
As much as she was drawn to the city and eager to be done with this grim task, she was still awed by this carpet of civilization before her. However, as she continued to gawk, little lights began to appear across the sprawl of suburbia. Ponies who had been thrust awake by the rumble of her approach. More and more were stepping outside with confused glances up and down the street. Was it an earthquake? It had felt so regular and distinctly like it was getting stronger. Then it had suddenly stopped. The sun was due to rise in an hour or two. Rise as much as it could that far north. So it was still very dark out. A few ponies were able to pick out the enormous silhouette looming just beyond the city limits. At first they saw the legs. Columns of dark that didn't match the normally empty sky. Their eyes pulled upward as they naturally searched for the top of these mysterious structures. Then their gaze crashed into an enormous chest supported by what were now obviously legs. Finally, as the ponies in question began to shake with fear and disbelief, their necks turned nearly vertical to find a pair of glowing yellow eyes hanging high above them. The eyes of a colossal monster sweeping back and forth over the many houses and streets. Taking it all in. None of the minuscule ponies could do anything but quiver as the Titan took no notice of them.
These buildings were a bit smaller than the ones in the outskirts. None of them were bigger than her hoof. Yet there were more of them and they had wider roads. Strange. Again she faced the dilemma of whether to take the time to smash these structures. There were supposed to be bigger and even more densely packed homes somewhere in the city. Was this worth the effort? Again she debated with herself.
As she stood there mentally going back and forth, the ponies of the Crystal Empire began to recover their nerve. The giant wasn't moving. The green mare was just staring off into space, completely zoned out. Some rushed back inside to call the authorities. Some went to their neighbors and began banging on the door. Others went and woke their kids or spouse and dragged them outside to also gawk at the huge pony. It wasn't exactly panic, but a stir certainly was beginning to spread.
The Titan accepted the truth. The little ones were a threat. She was certain most of her retaliation would be done in the city itself, but these suburbs were also filled with homes and something she could not simply ignore. She didn't know how much damage she had to do to make them leave her alone, so she figured it was best to smash as much as possible. Better to be too aggressive than too merciful.
The Titan looked down at the first rows of homes in front of her. How should she do this? Just... step on them? She felt so lost. She had never done this before. In a strange land filled with creatures that looked like her only very small. Was this embarrassment? Had she ever felt that before? She took a breath to calm herself which became a cloud of condensation around her muzzle. She had to focus. This was war.
The Titan lifted a single huge hoof. Slowly pulling out of the hole it had dug while she had been idle. Dirt and other debris from her walk cascaded off the bottom of her foot like rain as she slowly brought her leg up. Ponies below stepped back in surprise, startled by her sudden movement. The Titan then pushed her leg forward. The enormous hoof, quite a bit larger than any house in the area, drifted over the road. A crystal unicorn stared upward as the dirt crusted surface passed overhead while barely illuminated by a nearby streetlight. The unicorn also had to jump aside as some refuse fell from above and began to paint the road. That enormous foot then came to a stop above a home. And there it stayed for a moment.
A number of ponies felt their hearts racing as they watched from their various vantage points. A giant pony. A hoof dangling so precariously above a defenseless home. Was she about to? Was this going to happen? No. This was a dream. A hallucination. It wasn't happening. Why was she here? Why was the peaceful Titan of the north here?!
A cloud appeared around the Titan's muzzle again as she exhaled. And dropped her hoof.
For a moment the night was silent. Then a boom anypony would describe as an explosion rang out. The earth shook. Ponies stumbled. Somepony's home was gone.
For a few seconds the Titan stood frozen. Simply staring at her foot. Waiting for something. A feeling? Retaliation? Even she didn't know what.
Somepony screamed.
The stir of tiny activity picked up as a number of them realized they were in danger and needed to flee. However, most were stunned or too confused to take action. Trying to understand why or what was happening.
The Titan sighed. This was the first time she had ever attacked another, ignoring various accidents that had occurred over her long life. She half-expected to be herself crushed by a sense of guilt. Instead, she felt nothing. The mare shook her head, took a deep breath, and steadied her mind. As her eyes took in a few groups far bellow who were currently fleeing, she reminded herself of her purpose. The small ones were threatening her land. She was here purely to defend herself. To drive away the little invaders. Her goal was not necessarily to slaughter them. The Titan just wanted to be left alone. She was here to destroy their homes and make them leave. With that conclusion straight she glanced at the many buildings around her.
The Titan lifted her other hoof and easily dropped it onto the next home in the line. The crunch of wood was barely a whisper even to her sensitive ears. Instead, the thing she heard most clearly was the boom and the increase in high pitched screaming of the tiny ones. She huffed once. Then she took another step forward and demolished yet another building. She was following one of the many streets deeper into the suburban sprawl, though she obviously was not using the road. Instead each hoof landed atop the next home in the row, destroying a place of refuge and warmth for the small ones. But there were so many. The Titan wondered if she'd even be able to destroy them all.
Her anger began to boil. She stomped more forcefully. The crowd of panicking little ponies grew larger and their cries grew more frantic. The ground shook ever more violently. Crash after crash filled the early morning air. Some foolish individuals and families thought hiding in their homes was the safest option. Mistakenly believing the Titan would chase anypony they saw running. It was a miscalculation that swiftly cost them their lives.
When the street she was stalking began to turn so that it met another street the Titan stopped and looked back. She measured her work so far. Was that two dozen steps? Two dozen homes? How many of the little ones would that drive away? How many lived in each of these diminutive boxes? She didn't know for sure, but now that street was straddled by huge ugly craters. It was time for the next row. The Titan shuffled into position before a new line of homes on the next street over. She eyed the tiny wooden structures critically for a moment as the occasional pony scurried about beneath her. She snorted and lifted a hoof to resume her grim work.
Crash after crash after crash threatened to drown out the many voices. Parents calling for their children to keep up. Friends trying to find each other. Their many bodies flowed like water down a mountainside. A few individuals would meet and run together. Soon after they would converge with another group. And then that larger group would mix with yet another and another. Eventually culminating in a stream of ponies rushing out of the complex. A river trying to escape the disaster. Some had bags or miscellaneous items. Most had nothing.
The Titan spent several minutes stomping on homes. At the end of each neighborhood she would turn around and march her way over the following row. It wasn't particularly difficult or tiring, but it felt time consuming. Like a tedious repetitive task that just had to be done. However, the sprawl was huge and bordered by other somehow slightly different residential zones. After stepping on so many, the Titan couldn't help noticing the near imperceptible barrier. The line where the style of the homes changed. There was a tiny fence made of some kind of bushes and there weren't many roads that went through it. Also, the layout of the road was a little different. Like the builders wanted more curves here.
The Titan looked back at her progress. There were some homes she had missed in the first section of suburbia she had come across, but it was mostly just craters now and she didn't feel like going back. Instead she eyed the minuscule wall in front of her. It might have stopped a little one from crossing, but to her it was barely more than a line on the ground. She easily lifted a hoof over the useless barrier and dropped it on-top of the closest property. Then she stepped on the next home on the other side of the street. For a second the Titan felt a bit disheartened. There were just so many homes and so many of the tiny ones. Was she even making a dent?
The Titan quickly fell into a mindless rhythm. She was barely conscious of what she was even doing at this point. The work was too simple.
Then something caught the huge mare's attention. A sound. The Titan paused, having only finished with three street's worth of the new buildings. Her head turned and her ears perked. There weren't many ponies left scurrying around anymore. Most of them had already escaped or decided to hunker down in their basements. So it wasn't a crowd of crying refugees that was making that whining noise. What could make a whistle like that?
Then five colorful dots appeared.
Five pegasi in colorful uniforms soared into the airspace of the residential zone. The Titan was impressed. In this polar climate it was usually too cold to fly. Ice would quickly form on the feathers and wings and drag a pegasus right out of the sky. So pegasi that were strong enough to take to the air in these conditions, even if the morning appeared calm weather-wise, were something to admire. Not that the Titan was here to congratulate them. Shaking herself out of those thoughts, the mare evaluated the arrivals with a curious eye. Why were they here? The five pegasi soon paused a short distance away. Well, short for her. For several seconds the group simply hovered there, as though studying her in return.
The Titan quickly lost interest in these ponies dressed in flashy blues and reds and returned to her task. The huge mare located the next target and wasted no time lifting her hoof and dropping it on top of the doomed home. Then she raised another hoof and prepared to crush the building after that, but was stopped by one of the pegasi flying into her face.
The Titan was, although embarrassed to admit it, startled by the speed and suddenness of this colorful dot appearing in her vision. She stumbled back a few steps, tearing up lawns and two different streets as she struggled to keep her balance. Once the huge mare was certain she wasn't about to topple over, she realized the pegasus was still hovering in front of her face. It was rather rude, though it did let her make out some finer details. Like the fact this pony was shouting at her and waving their arms around. The Titan wasn't really interested in what they had to say and only caught something about being "just like the rest" and "you'll pay for this".
The Titan filled her lungs and puffed out her chest. Then she blew as hard as she could at the annoying pegasus.
The little one was sent rag-dolling through the air towards the ground. They flipped and spun and their wings thrashed in all directions. The other pegasi immediately flew after them in an obvious attempt to save them from the terrible fall, but it was over in an instant. The Titan was fairly confident the pest died when they hit the ground, but it was possible they survived one or two of those bounces. With that distraction out of the way the Titan regarded the suburban sprawl around her and returned to stomping on homes. However, her rounds soon took her to where the group of pegasi were all huddled around their fallen friend.
There was a bit of an awkward moment for the Titan.
They weren't really in the way. The Titan was more than big enough to straddle the street with her hooves planted atop the houses on either side at once. But it felt a bit weird to walk over the pegasi. So she found herself looming over the tiny group for a minute or two as she debated with herself if she should go around them. One of the pegasi decided to make the decision for her.
"You cruel bitch!" one of the tiny ponies screamed at the Titan as loud as he could.
For her part, the giant mare was offended. She was only here because of them. They were the cruel ones invading her lands for no reason. Disturbing her just because they could. And now the little thieves had the nerve to be mad at her for defending herself?
The Titan glared at the accusing pony and snorted once. They seemed to wilt under her gaze. Then the entire group backed up a step.
That wouldn't be nearly enough.
The Titan raised a hoof out of the hole that used to be somepony's home and aimed for the collection of pegasi. She couldn't see past her own foot what the reaction was, but she could imagine it was either a sudden sprint for safety or all of them freezing in terror. Whatever they did, the Titan was only sure none had escaped. Her hoof landed in the blink of an eye with such force that it compacted the road a few meters into the ground. And when she lifted her foot a second later, all that remained was her print. Though for the tinies it could only be described as a crater.