October 31, 1943

Thea Rinehelde closed her eyes and inhaled deeply as the hot water cascaded down from the showerhead over her naked form. She turned slowly, allowing it to soak through her flowing raven locks, cleansing her both literally and metaphorically. As she passed a soapy sponge over her bare skin, she mentally reviewed the new goals and perspectives solidifying within her. With little internal debate, she silently reaffirmed her cause, but did still spare a thought for the sequence of events that brought her to this point. Indeed, it seemed that they could have proceeded in no other direction; this was truly Destiny.

It all began with how it would all end: with a thoroughly average Nazi.

February 17, 1943

The sex really wasn’t very good, but Thea, ever a consummate professional in the art of social engineering, would never let Service Leader Schmidt think that he was anything less than a complete stallion between the sheets. She’d played that part to perfection the previous evening, which was no doubt why Schmidt was in such high spirits as he drove them through the winding trails deep within the Black Forest. The view of mostly-untouched greenery was almost beautiful enough to compensate for having to live in the middle of nowhere, isolated from German high society. Almost, but not quite.

Still, Thea had decided weeks earlier that the prestige of this project would do wonders for Schmidt’s career within the Party, and if he prospered, she would, as well. And if not, well, once they were back in Berlin, she would simply find another clever officer to hitch her star to, as well as pin her public affections. There was no shortage of them, after all, and almost every ambitious Nazi officer wanted a blond-haired, blue eyes Aryan beauty to call his own. While she may only have been a bottle blond, Thea Rinehelde otherwise fit that description to a T, and she’d long ago learned to take advantage of it. Her relationship with Schmidt, shallow though it was, had pulled her further up the ladder into high society, and she was always on the lookout for the next rung.

It was only rational, after all. The Chancellor may go on and on about Aryan purity, and the nobility of martial values, and the Thousand Year Reich and such, and that was all well and good, but it really didn’t mean anything to Thea. She didn’t need an overcompensating Austrian to remind her that she was of superior stock. She’d always known it, and would live and be treated as such.

Regarding her “lover” in the driver’s seat, she smiled slightly. Schmidt, a tall, blond man with a short crew cut, caught the look and smiled back. “And what’s so amusing, little flower?” he asked teasingly, using his pet name for her.

“It’s just a beautiful morning,” she replied smoothly. “A wonderful day after such an…exciting night.”

His smile widened as he returned his attention to the makeshift forest road. Her response was a vapid lie, of course; she was really reflecting on what she considered a worldly irony. Schmidt was considered smart enough by the party to head this clandestine operation in the shadows of the Black Forest, yet she, with no real power or rank, easily wrapped him around her little finger. And Schmidt was hardly the only Party member this could be said of. Yet he and other men like him were “running” the country. Smart, and painfully stupid, all at once.

The facility they arrived at was a great deal less welcoming than the series of small cabins up the road that served as quarters for the senior officers: armed guards, razor wire, and a seemingly-impassable brick fence all served very well to convey exactly what sort of institution this was. However, those who would describe it as simply a work camp would be vastly underestimating its contents.

There were prisoners inside, true, but they were merely part of a much larger operation, an operation that defied simple classification. An operation that few Nazi officials, and even fewer Nazi records, ever made mention of. This operation was simply known as “Special Project Hexen.”

Not that much of this meant anything to Thea; honestly, she wasn’t entirely certain what it was that SPH was trying to do, beyond something classified. It hardly mattered to her, in her nominal post as a clerical aide. Her main task was organizing, sending, and receiving the various files, documents, and communications passing within the different divisions of SPH, and between SPH and the outside world. Not the most exciting post, true, but it was safe from the more…unpredictable elements of the war, and Schmidt’s cabin was actually quite nice. She was content, for the time being. It was probably the last time in her life she would be.

As Schmidt pulled his car to the sentries for clearance, they were met not only by one of the usual rotation of armed guards, but an older, balding and slightly portly man in a tweed suit. Thea recognized him as one of the more respected doctors working on the project, although she couldn’t place his name. The man had no social standing to speak of, and wasn’t worth wasting the effort on. Normally, anyway. Today, he appeared before Schmidt, apparently eagerly awaiting the Service Leader’s arrival. The doctor was full of energy, an odd mixture of excited and frustrated, all at once

“We’ve almost done it, sir, almost done,” the doctor said in a breathless tone as soon as Schmidt exited the vehicle. “The energy flow is correct, all aligned, but it still won’t provide results, and while we’re not certain what the problem is, the fact that we’ve made it so far-“

The doctor kept babbling on and on in a manner that Thea really couldn’t follow; judging by the somewhat befuddled look on her “lover’s” face, Schmidt was having a hard time keeping up, as well. After getting the animated academic to slow down for a moment, Schmidt decided that the best course of action was to simply go to the sub-basement laboratory and see the situation first hand.

Thea followed the men mostly out of curiosity; she wasn’t technically allowed to journey into this part of the facility, but her relationship with Schmidt, combined with the soldiers’ tendency to completely overlook the female staffers, ensured that no one would give her a second thought. They descended the hastily-constructed stairs into the lowest levels of Special Project Hexen, the doctor’s excitement growing more palpable as they approached the lab. The sentry at the rusted metal door saluted Schmidt with a click of his heels, before opening the entrance to him.

“Well, now,” Thea whispered to herself as they entered the lab, not entirely certain what to make of it. Portions of it were exactly what she expected: large machines and generators and transistors, the purposes of which eluded her, littered the room, illuminated by a combination of kerosene lamps and some simple electric lights. The other portions, however, both captivated and chilled her: arcane and illegible symbols painted onto almost every available surface, crystals of varying colors and sizes positioned at odd angles around the room, and an odd, coppery smell in the air.

After absorbing the scene in its entirety, Thea chuckled absently. “I suppose the Allies’ propaganda is true,” she noted, even as the men in the room ignored her. “The Chancellor and his circle really are in league with the powers of darkness, or…whatever this all is.”

Again, none of the men seemed all that interested in addressing her; the doctor was joined by a pair of additional scientists who were all trying to explain the progress of their research to their Service Leader. Thea wasn’t offended by their lack of attention; indeed, she usually used such moments to her advantage.

This time, however, she was content to merely examine the surreal setting around her. It was then that Thea noticed the other occupant of the room: a thin, pale man in a gray prisoner’s uniform, held firmly in a chair by the leather straps attached to it. While he may have seen better days, his frame betrayed a man who still had a great deal of strength and vitality within him, and his eye betrayed a determination that his servitude hadn’t managed to beat out of him.
Thea was surprised by how amusing she found it.

“So, tell me,” she teased, approaching him slowly. “What were you? A Jew? Gypsy? Pollack? Or maybe you just couldn’t keep your mouth shut, hmm?”

The man eyed her warily, a bit of confusion creeping into his determined expression. Who was this woman, and what was she doing here? Uncertain, he held his tongue.

His defiance tickled Thea in a deep, dark part of herself that she had rarely faced, before. “You know, I would bet that I’m the first real woman you’ve laid eyes on in a long time. Am I right?”

Faux-giggling for his amusement, she moved even closer in an exaggerated sultry manner. She dressed appropriately conservative for work, wearing a white blouse and black skirt that reached all the way to her shins, but she knew exactly how to move to allow the unremarkable clothing to outline the remarkable perfection of her form. “Do you like what you see, swine?”

“Nazi bitch,” the man muttered, his eyes turning hard.

“Such big words,” Thea hissed, anger blazing in her eyes like a living flame. “Big, big words from you. And what are you? ‘Swine’ is too generous. You’re just a…nothing. A maggot. An insect not fit to crawl at my feet.”

As she spoke, Thea didn’t notice the way light suddenly reflected off of the crystals spread around the room. She didn’t watch her footfalls place her into the center of one of the arcane symbols on the ground. She barely noticed the hum of machinery coming to life around her. She did, however, see the blinding flash of white light, so bright it pained her eyes. It took a few seconds for her vision to clear, and the scattered discolored blotches to fade from her sight.

A furtive glance around the room showed her that everyone else was as shocked by this event as she was. The doctors raced to their machines, shouting something in an elated fashion. Schmidt was, once more, trying his damndest to keep up, but it hardly seemed to matter. It occurred to Thea that more than a few seconds must have passed since the light, and she was simply the last to recover her senses. Or had she recovered them at all? Everything seemed so distant, so far away, that even when she realized the prisoner was no longer in his chair, she felt nothing.

Intellectually, she recognized the possibility that he could have escaped in the confusion. But even as her mind considered this possibility, a deeper part of her knew the truth. She stepped slowly, almost leisurely to the chair where the man had been bound, looking not at it, but at the floor it rested on.

And then she saw him. Rather, she saw what he had become.

His form was the same. His clothing and manner was the same. Only his dimensions had been changed, from at least five foot ten to a mere two inches. His determination, it seems, had diminished as well, as he looked exactly as terrified as the rodent he’d now become.

Once more, Thea’s intellect and naturally quick wits broke down the situation. Clearly, Special Project Hexen was trying to mix the modern with the mystic, magic and technology to do things never thought possible. Shrinking a human being to a mere two inches…such a weapon would end this war quite decisively for the Axis powers. No wonder the doctors and officers were so frantically checking their equipment, trying to record the data; that information was invaluable, and the life and security of a test subject was nothing in comparison.

Again, these thoughts filled Thea’s mind, but were regulated to the background, a charming bit of mood music for the true matter at hand. The other Nazi agents could have been shouting in her face, and it would hardly have registered for her, in light of these new events. That deep, dark part of Thea’s soul was stirring, again; it wasn’t merely tickled, now. Now, it had been stroked, like a loving caress, by the circumstances before her, and nothing would stop her from releasing it.

Her smile, as the shrunken man looked up at her, was both playful and predatory, hungry and lustful and spiteful and joyous all at once. “As I said,” she whispered, breath suddenly shallow. “Merely an insect…”

In a single, swift motion, she moved her black high heel over the man, who couldn’t hope to react in time. The obsidian behemoth ground him out of existence in less time than it took for him to comprehend his annihilation. Relative leagues above him, Thea earnestly made the hushed whimpers and experienced the sensations she had merely pantomimed for Schmidt the night before. She couldn’t put into words, or even explain to herself, why this act of casual murder enflamed her passions (along with other portions of herself) with such intensity. At that moment, it hardly mattered. Her euphoria was so complete that she almost cursed herself for ending it so quickly.

Next time, she decided, she would savor the moment more. And then she caught herself. Next time?

Without hesitation, she joined the group of men at the other end of the room, still trying to completely quantify what had just happened. “Doctor,” Thea said firmly. “I will be joining you in your research.”

Her statement, though simple, was made with such confidence that it never occurred to any of the men present to deny her.

October 31, 1943

Back in the present, Thea wore a subtle smirk as she slipped her black top on over her white undershirt. It was a military top, modified to remove any placement for ranks or insignias. Technically, even eight months after becoming indispensible to Special Project Hexen, she had neither. Nor, she’d come to realize, did she want any. Meaningless titles and honorifics seemed so…petty, now.

Pulling on a matching black skirt, she sat and began the not-inconsiderable process of lacing her leather boots. These were most certainly not regulation, going up to her knees and sporting a wicked spiked heel, but it wasn’t as if anyone was going to argue with her, now. No one had really stood up to her since…well, since that British fellow. It seemed like a lifetime ago; she was still a different person, then. Not yet complete.

August 23, 1943

Much had changed in the months since Thea’s first time, all of it for the better. The doctors in charge of the shrinking operation had been overjoyed with their initial success, although their enthusiasm had been dampened slightly once they realized that it was almost impossible to replicate the results. Or rather, they could replicate the results easily, provided they followed the exact same steps as before. Only Thea Reinhelde was actually able to complete the process, and initiate the transformation of their human subjects into mites to be crushed under her boots.

While the shrinking operation was the only division of SPH that saw any results at all, it was still unable to weaponize its own achievement. What this meant in practical terms was an incredible amount of human testing, which Thea was more than happy to lend her services to. The outer façade of the complex began to become a bit neglected, as the project had to pull three and four prisoners a day to continue testing the modifications to the shrinking process.

Each time, success only came with Thea at the center of the event. And each time, she was allowed the duty of clean up. She was so eager to help, and cement her position in the project, that she would oftentimes lend her own thoughts and opinions on what may be going wrong with the process. Whether or not they paid her advice any heed was irrelevant, of course. She vastly preferred being ignored, if their other option was paying too much attention to the enjoyment she took from disposing of the shrunken subjects.

Do not doubt that she took a great deal of enjoyment from disposing of them.

After her first, all too brief experience, she went the opposite extreme with her next insect, who had formerly been a young woman of about Thea’s own age. Thea tested the limits of the bug’s body, keeping it alive for almost a half hour until the tiny thing finally died. Thea did have to admit that this second encounter wore out its welcome about halfway through the process, but she needed to know how much interaction the maggots could withstand.

The third time was the charm. It was the perfect sadistic blend of physical brutality and mental gymnastics, breaking down her prey, an older man with a full head of gray hair and an impressive vocabulary of profanity, in such a delightful fashion that she still got butterflies in her stomach just thinking of it.

With this victory under her belt, (or rather, under her foot), she began to get delightfully, despicably, creative. With so many incoming victims, and so much free time to let her mind wander, it was inevitable that the small corner in the subbasement would become witness to some ferociously heinous acts.

Despite her truly creative imagination, there were some noticeable constants in Thea’s routine, which only grew more pronounced as her confidence increased. First, she would invariably taunt her victims in a personal, insulting manner. She would insult physical appearance, circumstances, nationality or background, and anything else she could deduce from the victim, with the petty vindictiveness usually seen in public schoolyards. Perhaps even more telling than her spiteful quips were her sensual ones; the process of murdering the insects had become strangely erotic to her. She couldn’t articulate why, but the realization of the absolute power she held over her victims gave a greater sense of euphoric pleasure than anything she’d ever experienced before.

The high she received from slaughtering her prey was so great, she was even able to bring herself to a true climax for the hapless Service Leader Schmidt. Schmidt didn’t suspect that his lover was thinking of other men and women while she was with him, but it was probably for the best; if he couldn’t handle that realization, the knowledge that she was recalling their brutal murders while he was inside her would be even more upsetting.

Schmidt had obviously grown even more proud of his trophy after she proved to be indispensible to the shrinking project, but her success also created some very pressing problems for him. He’d explained to his superiors how SPH had no problem repeating the process; unfortunately, he also had to explain that they’d, as of yet, made no headway in replicating, mobilizing, or generally weaponizing it. His great breakthrough was viewed by his superiors as little more than a dancing circus bear: entertaining, but hardly useful outside of its novelty.

And then, to everyone’s surprise, Schmidt actually had a clever idea.

Even Thea, (or rather, especially Thea), was impressed by Schmidt’s proposal: transfer an Allied spy to SPH, and allow Thea to shrink and interrogate him. It was generally agreed that any person in that position, no matter their training or internal fortitude, would volunteer any information necessary in order to be granted a return to natural proportions. The fact that no way had been found to reverse the shrinking process was immaterial. (In fairness to the doctors at SPH, they hadn’t actually attempted to do so.) A few minutes in Thea’s…creative care was certain to reduce any Allied infiltrator to a fountain of information.

It went without saying that Thea was completely in favor of this proposal. This was how she found herself in her newly-acquired quasi-uniform, waiting patiently for the enemy agent to be escorted to her little dungeon. She was told that the man was British, which was no impediment for a woman who could speak the language fluently. She hadn’t been told, however, how young he was; when the bound prisoner was escorted into the room, Thea would have placed him at no more than nineteen or twenty.

The young man was dressed in a grey prisoner’s uniform, which seemed a bit out of place considering how he still looked relatively healthy and vital. His blond hair and blue eyes made him ironically handsome by German standards, although his features still had a marked boyishness to them. His eyes were glued to the floor, obviously not willing to give his captors any sort of opening to taunt or engage him.

Thea let him keep up his little act of defiance, not bothering to address him as the guards strapped him into the chair in the center of the room. “We’ll be right outside, ma’am,” one of the men noted, not making eye contact with her. Thea had noticed that many of the staff and troops at the facility had begun to shun her slightly, treating her with a superstitious sort of fear. It didn’t bother her; in fact, she found it rather charming. She smiled to herself as they left the room, closing the door and leaving her alone with the Briton.

“So,” Thea purred in English, sauntering towards the man. “What’s your name?”

No response. Thea frowned, physically grabbing the man’s chin and forcing his head up, until their eyes locked. “You will answer me, boy,” she snapped. Whatever patience she might once have possessed had long since drained away in the throes of her power and passions. “Now, what is your name?”

She took a moment to push her nails into the side of his face, drawing a bit of blood. The Briton pulled back, and Thea allowed him to escape her grasp. He glared at her. “You can call me Timothy,” he bit off in English. “And that’s all I’ll be telling you.”

“You’re so certain, now?” Thea replied. “Because, obviously, you’re in such a wonderful position to defy me, aren’t you?”

“I’m not afraid of some Nazi bird in a basement.”

“That’s because you don’t know any better,” she noted, circling him. “You don’t know me, at all. Don’t feel embarrassed; no one here does. But if you truly knew who I am, and what I am, you’d tell me anything I asked.”

“Whatever you say, love. Do your worst.”

Thea chuckled, pausing behind him. “I will, if I must,” she said. “But, if you cooperate, I might, instead, do my best for you.”

She leaned over his shoulder, under her lips were almost touching the young man’s neck. “Have you ever been with a woman, little Timmy?”

She was close enough to see the goose bumps rise along his skin. “I’d rather be with a dog than one of Adolf’s tarts,” he replied sternly.

He expected another violent reaction, but received instead another sultry chuckle. “I’m going to tell you a little secret, Timmy,” she whispered. “You were never going to leave this room alive. You may have already guessed this. You stopped being a human being as soon as you entered my care. You’re just a trinket for my amusement. I don’t care what secrets you hold. Tell me, or don’t. It makes no difference.”

She was certainly correct, in that the agent assumed his fate already sealed. But this last confession puzzled him. What sort of mind games was she playing?

“Well, you’ve made it easy for me,” he said slowly, still uncertain. “If the result’s the same either way, I’m not about to sell out Queen and Country, no matter what you do.”

Thea completed her circle, standing in front of him again. “Try to pay attention, boy,” she sighed. “I just told you a moment ago: I don’t care if you tell me anything or not. I just want to have my fun. I already get plenty of practice on the camp workers; you probably saw them outside. But, between us, they’re beginning to bore me. They’re already so defeated, most of them have already been ground down before I even get to start. It’s not nearly as fun as, say, a strapping young soldier like yourself.”

Without warning, Thea backhanded her prisoner, with a level of strength that shocked the man almost more than the action itself. There was a sickening crunching sound, as his nose was broken by the impact. Blood freely flowed down his face as stars danced before his eyes.

“What the fuck was that, you fucking cunt?” he cried out, his calm defiance totally gone.

“It’s funny,” Thea noted calmly, absently wiping the blood from her hand. “But ever since these tests started, I’ve felt…better. Stronger than before. I suspect that, as part of the process, I’m draining life, vitality, and strength from my prey. I get power from being who I truly am, and turning you people into what you truly are.”

“You’re…you’re fucking crazy,” Timothy slurred, not having any idea what the sadistic beauty before him was going on about.

“But,” Thea continued as if she hadn’t heard him. “I’ve never had the opportunity to play with a man, before. Just bugs. So, I haven’t been able to really see what I’m capable of. Until now.”

With an almost-innocent giggle, she grabbed his throat with her left hand, applying as much pressure as she could. “Now, baby, be a dear and turn blue for me.”

The pain was initially unbearable, but as his oxygen was cut off, it became more like a distant irritation. Timothy felt himself fading away, with enough detachment to note how…impossible this all was. The insane Nazi girl was throttling him with one hand, casually adjusting her uniform with the other. By all logic, this should have been impossible.

For a brief second, he blacked out. As soon as he did, however, Thea released her grip; she wasn’t about to let him off so easily. When reality returned to the agent, he could feel Thea’s weight on top of him; the German woman was straddling him in the chair.

“I’d thought you Brits were made of sterner stuff,” she purred. “Apparently not; you can’t even satisfy a woman of my tastes. Such a pity, little Timmy.”

In a single motion, she ripped open his prison uniform, exposing his chest. Timothy was shocked by the gesture, but the shock swiftly turned to horror as she plunged her nails into his chest. He cried out in pain and surprise as she twisted slightly, drawing forth copious amounts of blood. His reaction was a sharp contrast to hers; Thea was purring eagerly, with a euphoric look on her face. As Timothy struggled against his restraints in a vain attempt to buck her off, she began to gyrate slightly in response, mocking his pain in a brutal and callous pantomime of love making.

After a few moments of her game, Thea retracted her nails, breathing in deeply. “Oh, my dear little boy,” she whispered huskily. “Maybe I was wrong about you. Your screams are so, so delicious…you’re making me excited for what comes next.”

The prisoner was in no condition to inquire as to what came next, instead doing his damnedest to regain some measure of composure. He felt a slight bit of relief when she dismounted, letting him bleed in peace for a moment. It was short-lived, however. With an absent motion, Thea flipped on one of the machines in the corner of the room, and took her place in the center of an arcane image painted on the floor. The Brit had no idea what was coming, but the expression on his captor’s face chilled him to the bone.

There was the flash, of course, although Thea no longer found it blinding. And then Timothy truly was little Timmy, two inches tall at her feet. She didn’t wait to let him regain his senses; she was too excited, now. In a smooth, steady motion, she slid her right foot free from its boot, flexing her toes against the nylon hose that extended down from her calf to her sole. While every part of her anatomy had ended an insect’s life by this point, she had a particular affinity for crushing them underfoot, and had practiced several marvelous ways of doing so.

There were certain, other advantages to leaving her hands free; they could be put to other uses. As she began to put them to appropriate work, sliding one up her blouse and another down her skirt, she pressed Timothy beneath her foot, with just enough pressure to be painful, but not yet enough to injure him.

“I want you to know,” she said slowly, even as her face reddened and beads of sweat began to drip down her forehead. “That you’re nothing. Absolutely nothing. But this…this experience has been very special to me. And you got to be a part of it. Everything about your pointless existence has led to this moment, my moment of pleasure. I’ll forget you, but not these acts. It’s more of a legacy than a speck like you deserves. It’s more than anyone deserves.”

Her hands began to move faster, now, as she pressed harder upon her prey. She could feel things within him breaking, or at least imagined she could. It was ecstasy.

“You’re all insects,” she whimpered to herself, full engrossed in her pleasure. “All of you. Germans, Jews, Allies…maggots at my heel. And I tire…of holding myself down to your level…”

She glanced back down at her toy, eager to see the look of anguish on his face before she crushed him. As she did so, however, something caught the corner of her eye: one of the gemstones used in the ritual had been knocked out of place, no doubt by one of the guards transporting Timothy into her dungeon. By all rights, then, the shrinking process shouldn’t have worked; the mystic circle was incomplete.

Unless.

The implications of her realization flooded through her, and Thea climaxed with such ferocity that she crushed Timothy into a stain without a second thought.

October 31, 1943

She’d been honest with Timothy about the significance of his death. (On second thought, maybe it was “Thomas” rather than “Timothy?” Thea was a bit better with faces than names, but she was far better with horrible murders than either of those.) His ignominious demise, and the discoveries she made while enacting it, had forever changed her thinking; more accurately, it had vastly accelerated the changes her thinking was already experiencing. Her place in the world was clear to her now, as was her Destiny. All it took was the will to embrace it.

However, her execution of the Allied spy had created other problems for Special Project Hexen: having failed to extract any information, the facility had consequently failed to prove its value to its National Socialist superiors. Service Leader Schmidt, chastised as he was by the failure, only saw a fraction of his commanders’ disapproval; Thea used her knowledge of the mails within SPH to prevent some of the more urgent messages from reaching their destination. After several weeks of this campaign, the desired result was achieved: the Nazis were formally closing SPH, planning to use its people and resources in more productive areas of the war effort.

Naturally, Thea ensured that no one else at the facility knew of this announcement. She replied on Schmidt’s behalf, providing a timetable by which the base would be dismantled and its staff returned to Berlin. This courtesy wasn’t done out of any remnants of respect for the command structure; it was done solely to ensure that no one would come investigating their silence for some time.

Granted, she didn’t need too much time. A morning would suffice.

She stood, now, completely dressed, with her raven hair flowing past her shoulders. She’d stopped dying it shortly after tiny Tim’s murder, seeing no reason to conform to any standards of perfection save her own. Fortunately, she was already her own benchmark, particularly in her current garb: a black miniskirt, matching black suit jacket, white blouse, and obscenely tall black boots. She smiled coyly to herself, eyes glittering with excitement. Today was a wonderful day. Today, Thea Reinhelde would cease to exist.

She walked calmly down the hall, enjoying the way those few people she passed on the way moved quickly to the side. They were eager to avoid any contact with the woman, whose ill repute had only grown in the past two months. Thea hadn’t done herself any favors in this regard, no longer feeling the need to treat the others in the facility with anything less that the total contempt she felt for them. Those feelings had only intensified, but acting upon them would come later. For now, it was almost dawn, and she had somewhere to be.

She left the confines of the main building and entered the work yard, where the prisoners were housed. The first rays of dawn were just passing over the horizon, welcoming what was certain to be a beautiful crisp autumn day. The reds, browns, and oranges of the forest surrounding SPH were beautiful despite the unspeakable evils they hid, but Thea had no mind for them at the moment. She waiting in the shadows of the yard until she saw a warden approach the prison barracks, opening the door with a shout.

“On your feet, pigs!” the large man shouted at the assembled prisoners, waking them in the loudest and most unpleasant manner he could manage. “You’ve got a long day ahead of you, oh yes. First-“

He never got to finish whatever vague threat he had in mind. So engrossed in the petty joy of his bullying, the man didn’t hear Thea approach stealthily behind him. In fact, he didn’t register anyone behind him right up to the point where she grabbed the back of his head, and effortlessly twisted it around one hundred and eighty degrees.

The noise his body made as it died, as well as the shocked look of pain and terror on his face, would have been much more horrifying to the astonished prisoners if it hadn’t been happening to one of the worst human beings they’d ever had the displeasure to know. As his body fell like a sack of meat, they started at Thea with a combination of equal parts fear, gratitude, and confusion.

Thea smiled innocently, relishing the irony of the situation. She’d slaughtered more of their fellow insects than the fat warden would ever dream, yet no one present had any idea. She decided it was time to sharpen the knife before it came down on their necks.

“Congratulations,” she said with as much sincerity as she could manage. “You’re all free.”

She scanned the group, looking for that one sign of success. Truth be told, these people were far too abused and wronged to take her at her word; they were obviously very suspicious of these circumstances, and perfectly right to be. Thea noticed that this lot was a bit healthier-looking than the original group they’d begun with; the high turnover she’d created had necessitated bringing in fresher, less worn prisoners. In their own way, this entire assembly was a testament to Thea’s own metamorphosis.

Her introspection was concluded immediately upon finding what she sought: a single prisoner whose eyes lit up with hope at Thea’s worthless declaration. The hope poured from the visage of a young woman about Thea’s own age, which made the discovery all the more delicious.

This girl would be the last to die, Thea decided. She chuckled slightly, her innocent demeanor immediately abandoned. She’d enjoy draining every last bit of hope from the girl’s eyes, before ending her. Without any further proclamations, she lifted her hands.

There was a blinding flash.

Ever since executing the Briton, Thea had obsessed over the odd circumstances of the event. A gemstone had been knocked out of place, which theoretically should have meant that the shrinking process would fail. Yet, it hadn’t. It had worked exactly as expected, and further, been the most enjoyable event of Thea’s life. Although she had absolutely no quantitative data to back her theory, the woman had instantly understood the truth, intuitively understanding these dark powers and her relationship to them far more than the supposed experts who poured over their machines and notes and books.

The power wasn’t in their process. The power was in her. It had always been in her. Adapting to their procedures didn’t aid her; it restricted her, kept her in check, kept her limited to a single target at any given time. By this point, Thea felt she’d grown far beyond such meager concerns. She wanted to tackle larger challenges.

Like the entire barrack of prisoners that she’d just shrunken, all at once.

Thea’s eyes briefly rolled back in her head as she savored the invigorating feedback she received from draining and shrinking almost two dozen ants at the same time. She could feel her powers and vitality increase from the process, and was almost disappointed when the sensation passed. That moment passed once she looked down, however.

The prisoners were in an obvious panic. Some stood dumbfounded, unable to process what was happening, but most had enough self-preservation to try and put as much distance between themselves and the towering madwoman as quickly as possible. Thea noted, with some satisfaction, that the hopeful girl was among those who couldn’t grasp the phenomenon; she’d collapsed to her knees in astonishment and terror. Excellent. It would make saving her for last all the easier.

In the past, Thea had learned to pace herself when killing ants, enjoying the process because of her limited access to these toys. Now, however, she could finally unleash herself with complete and total abandon.

If you were one of the shrunken people on the ground, it was bedlam. Those who made the foolish decision to stay put were mangled in a terrifying fashion, as the giantess slid her right boot across the floor in an arc, smearing any caught under it into a thin streak of red. Those who ran in a straight line were thrown off their feet as the titanic Thea dropped to her knees, giggling cruelly as she crushed the fallen insects under her fingers. Once she got all those stationary targets, she took a moment to suck their remains from her fingertips, moaning slightly as she did so.

Back on her feet, Thea focused on those who thought themselves so clever, hiding under the Spartan cots that lined the walls. With a single hand, Thea tossed cot after cot aside, laughing as she uncovered more and more cowering bugs before her boots. They were immediately destroyed, nothing recognizable as human left in their pulverized remains.

The whole process took about three minutes, during which time Thea’s mania and arousal had continued to rise. This had been an excellent start, and left her hungering for more. She fully intended to have her fill, but she first had one last prisoner to deal with.

The hopeful little girl was left among the gory remains of her friends, family, and fellow prisoners, shaking uncontrollably. She barely reacted as Thea thundered back to her location, ignoring the woman’s sultry sneer.

The girl looked up, and Thea could see the deep emptiness within her eyes, where light and warmth had once resided. The thought that she had completely destroyed this child’s spirit made the wicked woman purr slightly, an almost electric thrill running up her legs as she examined her handiwork.

The girl didn’t try to flee; she’d seen how hopeless that was. She said a single word, instead.

“Why?”

“Because someone had to be first,” Thea replied coolly, even as she slammed her foot into the inquisitive speck. With nothing else alive in the barracks, Thea calmly exited, heading into the main facility.

There was another blinding flash, and Thea’s games began anew.

The slaughter of the prisoners had been a manic, almost animalistic indulgence. However, the prisoners were nothing to her. In the base, though, were people Thea Reinhelde had known and lived and worked with. That she was destroying her former peers and superiors made the woman quiver with lust, even before she began to play.

The laboratory staff were first, if only because Thea was dying to explain how flawed and foolish their theories were. She casually lectured them, as if speaking to a stunted child, about their misconceptions regarding her and their work. As she spoke, she would occasionally grab one of their numbers from the crowd, ripping apart his limbs or torso with casual detachment, allowing his remains to rain upon the others. Once her lesson was complete, she obliterated the rest beneath her fist.

Each new group of guards she encountered would meet a different fate, depending on her mood. Some were simply crushed beneath her boots, or, if she had the mind to, beneath her stocking-clad foot. Some were thrown against the opposite walls, exploding into viscera upon impact. A few were simply enjoyed as mid-morning snacks. And one industrious soldier, who had climbed into a chair on his way to scale a desk, was smothered beneath her remarkable rear, as she simply sat upon him.

His dying motions left Thea squirming in her seat, adding to an already considerable furnace between her legs. She deemed it appropriate, as her next port of call was the clerical pool where she’d spent most of her time prior to the shrinking project. The small-minded women she had to endure working with had thought she didn’t hear what they said about her behind her back. What’s worse, some of them had the blasphemous gall to try to upstage her, dressing in a manner to divert attention from Thea’s own, more authentic, beauty. They were all worthless whores, and not only did Thea very much enjoy explaining this to them, she also enjoyed using them as such, killing them in the process.

By noon, the entire faculty of Special Project Hexen was dead, murdered horribly by their most promising success. The only survivor at this time, aside from Thea herself, was the project’s head, Service Leader Schmidt. His continued existence was not an accident; Thea was saving him for last.

She opened the door to his office carefully, not wanting to crush him accidentally. (Purposefully was another matter.) As it turns out, she needn’t have worried; the Nazi officer had succeeded where his subordinate had failed, reaching the top of his desk and patiently awaiting rescue.

He actually looked relieved as Thea entered the room, blissfully unaware of the carnage that had been wrought upon the rest of the facility. “Little flower!” he cried. “Thank God you’re here! Something’s gone wrong with the shrinking experiments! What has happened?”

Thea almost felt something like pity for the small, worthless little thing in front of her. It wasn’t due to any emotional attachment to the man; she’d shed whatever withered feelings she might have had for him some time ago. No, she simply felt a general pity for what was clearly a stupid, useless man who was not only far over his head, but too dull to even realize it.

As soon as she felt it, Thea realized she couldn’t afford any such emotion. Pity was a very human response, and she wasn’t human, any longer. She was so much more than that.

“I want you to know,” she said coldly, enjoying the obvious terror on his face as her tone set in. “That Thea Reinhelde feels pity on you. But she doesn’t exist anymore.”

“You…you’re talking crazy,” he managed. “You can’t betray me like this. You can’t betray the Reich!”

She laughed, shaking her head. “Idiot. I’ve no loyalty to them, or you. You still don’t see it, but your doctors got exactly what the Reich wanted here. They created the Master Race. How sad for you, that I’m its only member. Both the Axis and the Allies will be ground beneath my boot before too long. You’ll be long dead, of course, but not for nothing. Your death also ends Thea Reinhelde. Her life means nothing to me, anymore.”

“You ARE Thea!” he screamed, frustrated and terrified by her nonsense words. “I brought you here! I made you!”

“Hexen made me. I am the fruits of its labor. And to honor its work, I’ve decided to adopt its title. You, and everyone else, shall address me as ‘Hexen’. For as long as you remain alive, anyway, which should be about four seconds.”

With a deliberate motion, she plucked him from the desk, bringing him up to her face. Holding him between her index finger and thumb, she allowed Schmidt’s last sight to be the look of sheer, euphoric joy as she crushed him into pulp.

An hour later, having used the ammunition and gasoline reserves to start a powerful fire throughout the facility, she drove down the winding road through the Black Forest, positive that any evidence of her creation or her deeds would be destroyed by the flames.

Hexen was coming to civilization.