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 “Are the galvanic actuators in place?”

“Yes, Mistress!”

“And the thermionic power cells?”

“Fully charged, Mistress!”

“And tell me you didn't forget to-”

“I installed the magma pylons this morning!”

On a catwalk overlooking the twisted machinery, clad in a revealing black-and-red leather outfit, stood Helena the Wicked, Duchess of the Mad and Bringer of Destruction. For years she had sought a way to bring all of existence under her thumb, and finally the means to do so were in her grasp. She smirked down at her deformed henchman.

“Brilliant, darling. Begin the initiation process. Tonight we destroy this miserable planet and every wretched excuse for life living on it.”

Greegle, her minion, hesitated. “I-if we destroy all of everything, where will we live?”

Helena casually waved the concern away with her hand. “Don't stress your primitive brain trying to understand my machinations. Just do as you're told.” The misshapen being seemed satisfied with this answer and hopped around the lab, throwing switches and turning dials as he had been trained to do.

A cylindrical chamber slowly rose out of the center of the room, surrounded by a plume of smoke. When it finished extending, part of the side slid away, revealing a cramped interior space. Greegle started to waddle towards it, but Helena was already beside him, shoving him out of her way.

“What on Earth would make you think you go first?” she asked snidely, stepping into the chamber. She wore a satisfactory grin as she turned around, completely inside the vessel that would deliver her to world domination. “Start the process.”

“Starting it, Mistress!” He threw another lever and the door to the container hissed to a close. Helena could feel the chamber lowering like an agonizingly slow elevator. Just as she was wondering if it would ever end, the chamber was suddenly flooded with a blinding white light. She cried out and threw her hands up to shield her eyes, but it seemed to come from everywhere.

“Turn the lights down!” she shrieked, but even now she could hear that there was something different about her voice. It sounded like she was yelling into a hollow space, like a snowy meadow with no reverberation. “Greegle! What's going on!? Is it working?”

Slowly the lights faded, and for a brief moment Helena looked out across the world and saw her dream: she had grown. She was on all fours, but she must have been dozens of miles tall. She could see a handful of cities, each separated by large tracts of rural and suburban land. She knew it wouldn't be long before the entire world cowered beneath her boot, singing her praises or being crushed to a fine paste. And, if she was being honest with herself, the former category ran a pretty good chance of joining the latter, too.

All these thoughts raced through her mind in a moment, because in the very next she found herself careening forward, the weight on her hands too much for her elbows to bear. She tried to scream out as she fell, but the air in her lungs just blew soundlessly past her lips. Undignified, she thought, but recoverable. Who would mock a goddess?

Only she couldn't draw another breath. Try as she might, she instead just twitched her lips, gasping like a fish out of water. Those close to her who had been spared from the initial impact of her face against the ground were smeared into nothingness by her gasping lips, her head rocking slightly back and forth. What is this? What's happening? she thought, terrified.

She could also feel, through the growing burning in her lungs, that she was getting extraordinarily cold. She was freezing and was barely able to move. Her knees and elbows refused to support her enormous weight, and in her struggles she made something akin to a snow angel in the surrounding area, killing thousands with her pathetic efforts.

Helena the Wicked, Duchess of the Mad and Bringer of Destruction perished only a minute later, suffocating on her own inability to draw breath; but that wasn't to say she failed. In the coming months her gargantuan body began to rot, and despite the world's united efforts to spread around her remains, it was simply too much for the miniscule people to do. Her contamination seeped into the Earth, a spreading corruption that poisoned the land beyond return for miles around.

As the corruption grew, the people of Earth realized the only answer was to sacrifice the continent. They scorched the land and severed what connections they could, but her legacy didn't stop at land. It spread into the ocean, where in the relatively quick span of a year it spread across the planet unabated. Millions made pilgrimages to the site of her corpse, praying that she would stop her thorough destruction, but while she had delusions of grandeur, Helena never was a deity.

Humanity perished shortly after Helena's rot had seeped into the entire world, and though she would never know it, she had been right. She had destroyed the miserable planet and every wretched excuse for life living on it.

 

Chapter End Notes:

This story was based off the prompt, "Really short story where an evil woman grows giant and tries to take over the world, but the square-cube law or whatever kicks in and her body immediately collapses under its own weight."

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