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.