Beginnings and Endings
===
High from the heavens, the kingdom of Krasomor, with its open grasslands, forests, and farms, appeared as a giant chessboard. Fields of green divided into squares, outlining properties and provinces, while statuesque trees stood as chess pieces over the land. Dark blue rivers rich with fish cut through the rolling green hills and valleys, giving way to the center of the kingdom.
From the palace to the homes of peasants, the façades of their structures were made of white and cream-colored plaster. Roofs and window shutters were painted in vibrant colors from grounded flowers, giving the capital city a splash of color among its green environment. Extraordinary mountains, lightly powdered with snow, added a fairytale quality to the kingdom.
Guards lined themselves in the grand hallway, stretching from the entrance of the palace all the way to the throne room. They were dressed in ceremonial red robes with gilded military ropes attached to their shoulders running down under their arms. They held pikes in their right hands with a chrome-like tip. Their left hands kept free but balled in a fist, showing their readiness for confrontation.
An exceptionally tall woman walked the halls along with her companion, who had to speed walk to keep up with the long gait of her master. The tall woman wore a royal blue dress. It was strapless, displayed her ample cleavage, tailored tightly around her waist, and had a long slit in front of her right leg. The material shimmered under the light, the way waves in a lake reflect the morning sun. Her golden heels clacked on the marble floor, adding an extra four inches to her height.
The tall woman’s companion was a young maiden, appearing close to the same age. Whereas the tall woman wore a dress that was worth the year’s wages of 20 peasants combined, the companion wore a modest brown dress and matching leather boots. She had her brunette hair done up in a loose braid, which hung well past her shoulders.
“What is the meaning of this?” Queen Svetlana came marching in the hallway, flanked by two royal guardsmen who carried pristine swords and polished helmets. “Who are you? I demand a name and the purpose of your visit at once.”
“My, my, my,” the tall woman said with a wry smile. “I’ve heard many tales about the Queen of Krasomor. Those tales of your benevolence and charms were nothing more than tall tales, it would seem.”
Both guards grabbed the hilt of their swords. Queen Sveltlana held a hand up to pause them. The queen’s eyes went up and down the tall woman, regarding her dress and appearance. Rare royal blue dye that colored her dress suggested her grand wealth, while her clean appearance and golden wheat hair hinted towards an aristocratic lineage. Regardless, the queen didn’t recognize this woman as any of the noble elites from her kingdom. And in her eyes, that meant the tall woman was nothing.
“Name and title,” Queen Svetlana demanded. “One stray word from your mouth, and you’ll find your head detached from your grotesquely large body.”
The woman’s wry smile transformed into a toothy one. Perfect rows of teeth, whiter than the whites surrounding her ocean-blue pupils. The tall woman looked down at her companion, who smiled back. Despite being surrounded by a swath of soldiers, the defenseless women displayed no concern. The tall woman looked back down at the queen, who was over a foot and a half shorter than her.
“My name is Katarzyna. This lovely maiden …” Katarzyna placed her hand on her companion’s back—she was the shortest of the three women. “… her name is Oleńka.”
“Pleasure to meet ya, queen,” Oleńka said, extending a hand to shake.
Queen Svetlana didn’t bother looking at the shorter woman. “I do not communicate with commoners. Now, Katarzyna, who are you and what are you doing in my kingdom?”
Oleńka sighed and pulled her hand back, bowing her head in slight embarrassment and returning to the side of her master. Katarzyna stared intensely at the queen’s formal dress, which was mostly white with gems and gold trims sown about. Katarzyna straightened her posture and stood more imposingly before the queen and her guards. No one in the hallway came close to matching her height.
“I’ve come to take your kingdom,” Katarzyna said with a straight face. “And your husband, the king.”
Rage built in the queen. Her powdery white face turned red as she inhaled through her nostrils like a bull, but before she could scream, Katarzyna continued talking.
“I’m also going to seize your soul. And then finally your history. You asked for a title earlier, no?” Katarzyna tilted her head. It would’ve looked cute had it not been for the treasonous words out of her mouth. “My title is Goddess. I am Goddess Katarzyna, goddess of pamyatka—The Great Unwriter.”
No one in the grand hall flinched or reacted to the slightest from what Katarzyna said.
“I’ve never heard of such goddess,” Queen Svetlana said. “Not only do you come to my home—my kingdom—uninvited, but you also make outlandish threats to usurp the throne and now blasphemous claims of being a god?” She took a step forward, tilting her head further back to meet Kat’s eyes. “Once you and your friend are executed, we’ll throw both your corpses to the pigs and promptly forget you ever existed—for you are nothing.”
Katarzyna inhaled a sharp cylinder of air through her lips. “I do love the irony in your statement. And I forgive you to a certain extent. Being the goddess of memories … it’s not unsurprising you know nothing of me.”
Katarzyna waved her hand towards a wall with stone statues lined in a row. Each magnificent statue standing 10-12 feet tall featured a god or goddess. Three males and three females. Queen Svetlana and her guards looked over at the arrangement and noticed the fourth goddess on the right. The queen rubbed her eyes and looked up again. Only three goddesses ruled the universe … three, right? Six gods existed in total: three male gods and three female goddesses.
Queen Svetlana started at the beginning. She regarded each statue individually, each one a masterful piece of art in which the artist yielded the marble like clay. There stood Velemir and Yarovit—two masculine gods wearing revealing robes that displayed their prowess. Strong, muscular, and heroic. Arms bigger than heads with thighs larger than a tree stump.
Zoraslava and Domira were next. Elegant goddesses with the physical attributes all mortal women yearned for: wide hips, ample breasts, and beauty that could only be found in the heavens. Lastly, there stood Goddess Katarzyna. Extraordinarily long legs, shapely ass, and breasts that defied gravity. Long, flowing hair, like the sails on a ship, blew behind her. Katarzyna’s pose in the statue gave this illusion that she was running through a forest, shrouded by darkness, with a mischievous grin looking at the viewer no matter where they stood.
Queen Svetlana counted. Five gods. How could she forget about Goddess Katazyna? Wasn’t she the most powerful of the five? The queen couldn’t be sure. Mystery shrouded the fifth god. Regardless, a god was a god. Not an entity mortals trifled with or defied. Her eyes went from the statue and back to Katarzyna. The likeness was uncanny. She dropped to the floor on her hands and knees, followed quickly by her guards.
“Forgive me, goddess,” Queen Svetlana said. “I didn’t know.”
“Want me on the floor, too?” Oleńka asked. “Can never hurt to get more worship, amirite?”
The goddess smiled down at her companion. “No need, my little friend. Now run off and find me the king.”
“Oh c’mon. Kat, please let me watch you harvest her soul.”
Queen Svetlana looked up in horror. “W-what? Is this because of earlier? Goddess, I swear I didn’t know it was you! Please—”
Katarzyna swiped the open air in front of her, telekinetically slapping the queen across the face.
“Oleńka, you will ruin my fun with that fat mouth of yours.” She looked down at her short friend.
“What are you gonna do about it?” Oleńka elbowed Kat’s outer thigh. She had a bright smile on her lips. “I’m the only mortal that isn’t affected by your mind tricks. Fat mouth or not, I’m like, your perfect little buddy!”
“You’ll be my perfect little buddy trapped inside my necklace unless you lose that cockiness, fair maiden.”
“You wouldn’t do that! … again.”
Katarzyna made a shoo gesture with her hands.
“Fine!” Oleńka walked away and knocked twice on the helmet of the guard bowing to the left of the queen. “C’mon dork; take me to your king.”
The guard nervously glanced between Oleńka and Katarzyna. With the approving nod from the goddess, he stood up and hurriedly guided Oleńka through the palace, heading to the king’s chamber.
Meanwhile, the goddess kneeled and grabbed the queen by the collar with her right hand. As Katarzyna stood up, she lifted the queen. The queen, along with her clothes, shrank within the goddess’s hand. Standing tall, Goddess Katarzyna examined the four-inch woman in her hand, whose head swirled from the drastic shift in perspective that occurred in mere seconds.
“What do you want?” the queen cried out. “I’ll give you everything, I swear. I’ll worship you … I’ll give you sacrifices from the kingdom. Whatever you want!”
“I don’t need you to get what I want,” Katarzyna said with an indifference etched in her eyes and lips. “I’ll take everything I want with or without your cooperation. Including your soul and history.”
“What?”
“When I consume and claim your soul, I will take everything about you. Your father and mother’s memory of you, your friend’s memories about you—and your own husband will forget ever being married to you. The entire kingdom will cease to remember they had a queen.”
“That’s … that’s not possible!”
“You dare tell a goddess her power’s limitation?”
The queen squeaked from the giant palm. “You can’t … how could you take away memories?”
“Trade secret.” Katarzyna licked her lips. “I’m going to consume you so hard, your very existence from this world will go along with it. No one will ever know you existed.”
“What? Wh-why?!” Her tiny voice was soft, like a chirping from a sparrow.
Katarzyna held the queen in front of her mouth, lips parting to reveal a sticky web of saliva that thinned and popped out of existence. A moan that came from the back of the throat vibrated her uvula and pushed out an invisible hot fog against the diminutive ruler.
“I’m a queen!” she shouted. “You can’t do this!”
“Watch me.”
Katarzyna made an aahhh sound as if blowing hot breath onto a mirror. What was an exhale, quickly turned to an inhale. The screams from the queen renewed as she felt her body—her essence—sucked towards that blackened maw of the goddess. An invisible force tugged at her arms and legs with relentless fury. She did not have the strength to pull back her limbs and doubted even her mightiest knights could pull back against the force of the goddess.
As the queen screamed and watched her rings and bracelets slip from her body and get pulled into the vortex of the goddess’s mouth, something else … something peculiar happened. She saw a white apparition being pulled from her hands and arms. She screamed—but it no longer felt like she was screaming. Her eyes looked down and saw a ghostly form leave her chest. Then her sight became white momentarily as this thing blocked her vision. Queen Svetlana felt terror like she’s never experienced before. The apparition was her. The ghostly form was her!
Goddess Katarzyna siphoned the queen’s soul straight from her mortal body. The queen reached out her hand, trying to grab hold of her soul as it left her body and turned midair to face her physical body. Both soul and person had equal looks of horror on them.
“No,” the queen said simply as her soul whisked away into the goddess’s open mouth.
Katarzyna sealed her lips as soon as it entered her mouth. The forceful vacuum and hot humming noise she produced ceased, bringing a momentary peace before she swallowed.
“Your soul is mine for an eternity, queenie.”
What did she do? Why did the goddess forsake her? She was a just ruler. Not cruel or a pushover. Stern, but fair. Why?
“I’ve heard tales of the king,” the goddess said, as if reading her mind. “I wish to sleep with him, and I needed you out of the way.”
Queen Svetlana looked up with an expression that was both confused and pleading. “But you needn’t consume my soul,” she said in a pitiful tone. “We would’ve given you anything and everything, my goddess.”
“Do you dare question my actions, little mortal?”
The queen shut her eyes and shook her head.
“Good.”
The goddess reopened her mouth and tossed back the queen inside. She stood up and played with the tiny royalty in her mouth like a piece of candy. Once her flavors faded, Katarzyna swallowed the screaming woman alive. She kneeled at the lone guard and lifted his chin with a finger.
“Goddess,” he said with reverence, trying to bow but unable because the goddess’s unmovable finger was unmovable like a mountain. “The que—argh!” Both his hands clamped down on his head as a powerful headache overtook his mind.
“Tell me,” Katarzyna said in a monotone voice. “Does a queen live here?”
He shook his head. “Our kingdom has no queen.” He took a breath while wiping sweat from his brows. “Our king had never married.”
“Most excellent.” She stood up and picked up the now four-inch guard in her palm. His shrinking as quick as a sleight-of-hand trick. “Are you a devout worshiper of mine?”
“Forgive me, goddess.” He took a knee on her palm and rested both hands on the standing one. “My family and I have devoted ourselves to Goddess Domira.”
“Shame. Your soul will never know Domira but only the hell I’ve prepared for such transgression.”
“Wait, perhaps I can—”
Katarzyna repeated herself, just like she did with the queen. She consumed his soul, leaving behind a mortal husk. She then consumed the husk. His mortal body bumping into the queen in her stomach. Each thinking it was their first time meeting. Katarzyna would allow them to live for a little longer. Enjoying their conversations that were full of confusion and errors. When she became bored, she allowed her stomach acids to return to full power, melting them in agonizing pain until they were nothing more than soup.
“Look who I found!” Oleńka said with a pep in her step. Beside her was the king, dressed in his formal regalia. Blue uniform with a white sash and made-up military medals hanging from his left breast pocket. “That’s the goddess!” she said to the king. “C’mon dude. Hook it up.” She pushed his shoulder.
“Goddess!” he said with wide eyes. He fell to his hands and knees and began worshiping her.
Katarzyna chewed on her inner lip. “Eh, he might be worth a single night.”
“Ooo, can I have him when you’re done?” Oleńka asked.
Katarzyna snorted. “Like a scavenging wolf, picking whatever meat is left on the bone.”
“Um, yeah. Pretty much.”
“No, dear. I am not sharing him.”
“Really? What do I get, then?” Oleńka whined.
“Me not smiting you or obliterating your soul into a million pieces. Better yet, you not existing in my personal hell.”
Oleńka looked up and to the side, then nodded once. “Okay, that sounds fair. But while you’re boinking the king, what do I do? I don’t want to go to bed alone.”
“Pick one of the guards to be your partner tonight.” Katarzyna flourished her hand towards the grand hall. Every guard stood perfectly still, shaped by years of military training and discipline. “And if anyone objects, let me know, and I’ll correct any issues.”
“Okay, deal. But I’m picking more than one. I’m in the mood for non-stop dicking.”
Katarzyna rolled her eyes and let out a disapproving gasp.
-
“My kingdom is your kingdom, Goddess Katarzyna.” With a wineglass in his hand, he pointed out into the distance from the royal balcony on top of the tallest tower in the palace. “Anything to make you feel at home; please let me know, and I’ll make it so.”
The sun had set hours ago, basking the land in a rich dark purple. Warm yellow lights glowed from the thousands of structures in the capital city like twinkling lights from candles inside a monastery. The moon was full that night, reflecting perfectly on the major river that cut through the city.
“Yeah, huh.” Katarzyna leaned on the balcony railings and looked out, unimpressed. She drank the contents of her wineglass in one gulp and then held onto the glass lazily. “Have you considered ruling your kingdom with a queen?”
“I …” The king’s boastful nature suddenly vanished. “I … I have considered it. The thought …” He held a hand against his head. “Strange. I had the faintest thought that …” He stared blankly onto the city far below.
Katarzyna smiled. She tossed her wineglass over the balcony. “Seeing you don’t have a wife, and I am your goddess, I have one demand.”
The king shook his head, shaking the cobwebs out of his mind. “Um, y-yes, goddess. Anything!”
“Make love to me. Impress me, and I’ll bless you and your kingdom.”
“A-absolutely!” He dropped to his knees and took Kat’s left hand and kissed it. “I’m eternally grateful to be offered such a magnificent—”
“If you don’t impress me,” Katarzyna said, interrupting his over-the-top speech. “I will wipe the existence of this irrelevant kingdom from the annals of human history.” She twisted her wrist and grabbed his, dragging him inside to his bed. “No pressure.”
-
Svetlana’s soul crawled on her hands and knees as the goddess shoved the much shorter king into his bed chambers. Only Goddess Katarzyna could see and hear the former queen’s soul as it begged her not to sleep with her husband.
“How does he not know me?” Svetlana’s soul said in anguish. “That adulterous swine! I am right here!” Svetlana stood and marched in front of her husband and attempted to slap him, her hand gliding through his face. She was a ghost … an apparition with no influences on the material plane.
Please, continue making a fool of yourself, Kat’s thoughts transposed themselves into Svetlana’s mind. It brings me joy seeing your misery.
“Don’t sleep with him!” Svetlana shouted from the other side of the bed as her former husband undressed himself, unaware he had a wife or that her tethered soul was in the room. His eyes never left the goddess as each article of clothing that was on him fell to the ground. “Stop! I can’t watch!” Svetlana turned, but the goddess wasn’t about to let the former queen avoid the show.
Katarzyna waved her hand, which appeared innocent to the king, but it was Katarzyna using her power to freeze Svetlana’s soul in place. She would watch the goddess fuck her husband, whether she liked it or not.
Reminder
===
The rising sun cut through the darkness and bestowed its golden hue across the sleepy kingdom. The first rays of sunlight hit the high tower in the palace where the royal chambers stood. Twelve-foot-long curtains gently wafted in the dawn breeze coming through the balcony, glowing yellow from the morning sun. A moist, earthy scent from outside filled the chamber, bringing with it a dusting of dew.
In the center of the room was a grand fourposter bed, complete with white curtains. The bedsheets were ruffled and strewn around with Kat’s long nude body lying on top. The sheets tastefully covered some of her nudity as she stared up at the ceiling, her fingers tapping her bare midriff as if playing a soft romantic song on the piano.
The chamberlain walked into the bedchambers and made a beeline for the bed. He spoke outside of the curtains with his head bowed, eyes averting the goddess’s nudity.
“Goddess, the envoy from Ledovar is here. They have an exciting message but insist it’s for the ears of our kingdom’s leadership only.”
“Pity this kingdom lacks a king or queen to handle such matters,” Katarzyna said, not moving from her position in the bed.
In the corner of the chambers, the souls of the king and queen were pleading with her, their feet frozen to the ground. They made promises and offerings that the goddess couldn’t bother entertaining, but she allowed them to continue as their pleas brought with it an ambience much like songbirds do with their chirps in the morning.
“Escort the envoy to me. He will be my breakfast. And deliver this letter to Oleńka. Do not wake her if you find her asleep. That little thing gets moody when her sleep is disturbed—and I can’t be bothered by her bitchiness today.”
A parchment materialized in the chamberlain’s hand, addressed to Oleńka with a wax seal on the seam. The chamberlain bowed and left with haste.
-
“Fucking hells!” Oleńka said as she climbed a steep hill that overlooked the kingdom. “Why’d you make me hike all the way over here?” she asked between strained breaths. Sweat beaded on her forehead. “You could’ve just poofed me here, y’know?”
Oleńka walked over by the goddess, who sat herself amid an endless grassy field. Kat’s gaze never left the kingdom below while her complaining mortal came to sit beside her. The goddess had her arms wrapped around her bent legs. She regarded the kingdom with a pensive stare, thinking about its tens of thousands of residents.
“What’s going on, Kat?” The short mortal woman brought her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs, mimicking the beautiful goddess.
“The stories of the king were false,” she said, still looking down at the kingdom, which looked miniature based on how far away and high up they were. “He failed to protect his people. So, their souls shall be mine. Starting today.”
Oleńka sighed. “Are you sure? Can’t you just … let them live?”
Katarzyna shot her a stern stare.
“I mean, can’t you scare them into worshiping you? That way they can live their lives, and when they die naturally, boom! Their souls are yours.”
“The king fucked like a limp slug. Therefore, everyone dies.”
“Huh … How do you know how a limp slug fucks?”
“Oleńka …” the goddess said with a rising inflection.
“Okay, I take it back! Sheesh.” Oleńka looked down at the doomed kingdom. “But maybe give them another chance? There’s gotta be a guy or gal down there that’s up to the task of satisfying you.”
“My decision is made. I will cull this land of insignificant mortals and claim their souls, making me more powerful than the other gods.” She turned to her mortal friend. “And you’re going to help me.”
“Um. I don’t know, Kat. I don’t want to kill anyone.”
“I don’t believe my instructions came off as an option to you, Oleńka.”
Oleńka swallowed a lump in the back of her throat. The young woman knew Katarzyna was a ruthless goddess, bent on seizing powers from the other gods so she could rule the universe unconstrained. When Oleńka was a child, she remembered going to the temple with her parents and brother to worship 12 gods. At present, the universe was down to five gods because of Katarzyna. Oleńka was the only mortal alive that had a faint recollection of the pantheon of gods. Oleńka wondered if the other gods knew of the others or if Katarzyna, The Great Unwriter, had the power to control their memory as well. That would mean the gods themselves didn’t know they were being systematically destroyed and their powers stolen by Katarzyna.
“I need more power,” Katarzyna said, placing an arm on Oleńka’s shoulder. “You will aid me, and I will gift you with a lifetime at my side. Betray me, and I’ll—”
“Kat, I love you. I want to help but—you know how I feel about … culling. To wipe out an entire kingdom—"
Thunder struck as the blue skies gave way to blackened storm clouds. Grass and wheat swayed heavily towards the South as the winds picked up. Oleńka felt droplets of fast-moving rain strike her exposed skin like sand in hurricane-force winds.
Katarzyna grabbed Oleńka by the scruff of her neck and shoved her back into the trunk of a nearby oak tree. Oleńka’s feet dangled two feet from the ground as her hands grabbed onto the wrists of the goddess. Her face contorted with surprised fear.
The surrounding environment took on a surreal quality. Skies darker than the blackest night with fast-moving clouds, only discernible when intense bolts of lightning struck, shattering outwards like veins in the human body. The ground and kingdom were still lit as if the sun were shining on it. Colors transformed and morphed as the rage of the goddess impacted the world around them.
“You are trying my patience, Oleńka,” Katarzyna said through gritted teeth. “This relationship isn’t a partnership. You are nothing more than an insect to me.”
A crack of thunder rang out as lightning struck the oak tree behind Oleńka. The mortal cried out, though she felt no pain. The trunk split, causing the entire tree to fall apart and give the mortal a clear view of the sky. Katarzyna lifted her free hand and snapped her fingers. The sky then began projecting hell. Katarzyna’s version of hell—the one she held domain over.
Oleńka cried as she witnessed the horrific spectacle. An endless tundra shrouded in cold blue light. Storms of sharpened icicles whipping across the skies, splintering into pieces of deadly shrapnel as they struck each other or the ground. Hundreds of thousands of buttes made up the otherwise flat polar tundra. As the projection zoomed into one of the buttes, Oleńka cried out for Katarzyna to stop, but the goddess didn’t. The column of icy land that jutted from the tundra comprised thousands of souls. Their lower bodies fused into the buttes like a wet tongue on ice.
These souls were in constant agony. Their arms flailing and begging, crying and repenting. Each face twisted with unbearable pain. They were naked, skin darkened from severe frostbite. While pleading, the icicle storm tore through their jerky-like skin, puncturing holes in their bodies that caused excruciating pain, only for it to heal just enough to keep some semblance of their former bodies, ready to be destroyed once more by the storm.
“I sent you here once. Do you remember?” Katarzyna yelled as she pointed at the projection in the sky behind her.
“Yes,” Oleńka cried.
“Two minutes in my hell felt like a year to you. Do you think you’ll last a month, Oleńka? Shall I remind you of the goddess you’ve devoted your life and soul to?”
“Please, Kat, don’t! I’ll do whatever you say.”
“Then why must you push back with every command I give you, insect?”
“I-I don’t know! I’m just having fun. And the only reason I hesitate about the culling is because it reminded me of my city and what you did to it. But you’re right. I’ll be good. I swear. I’m all yours, Kat. Please don’t send me to your hell!”
Katarzyna let out a deep breath. She waved her hand, causing the world to return to normal. The skies returned to a rich blue, while the stormy winds ceased, and the spectacle of morphing colors ended. The oak tree remained splintered from the lightning. Katarzyna set her mortal friend gently back on the ground as she walked a few paces away and sat back on the ground.
After several silent moments, Oleńka came kneeling beside the goddess. “I’m sorry, Kat. Please tell me what to do.”
“No, Oleńka … I am sorry.”
Oleńka sat in silence, stunned by what she heard. The goddess had never apologized ever before.
“I sometimes forget about your life before I showed up. Your family, your city … your life. I took all that away and have always demanded things from you. To have such a cheery disposition after all my cruelties—I admit, I take you for granted.”
Katarzyna looked over at Oleńka, who looked back at her with large doe-like eyes.
“Tell you what my tiny mortal companion—let me gift you with something special.” Katarzyna wrapped her arms around her friend and drew her next to her warm body. “Name it. Whatever you want,” she said with a lilt in her voice.
“Um. Okay, but don’t get mad.” Oleńka looked up from between her friend’s loving embrace. “Can you make your hell … a little less hellish? Please don’t get mad!”
Goddess Katarzyna laughed but then smiled endearingly. Katarzyna snapped her fingers. “It is done. So strange you care about the trivial souls of millions instead of obtaining powers for yourself.”
“Eh, what am I gonna do with them, anyway?” Oleńka snuggled her head against the goddess’s ample chest. “I can always bum off your powers, so long as we’re together.”
Katarzyna pondered her words. “Well, that starts now, with you aiding me in my quest reaping the souls of everyone in this kingdom.”
Oleńka cringed. “Okay, so, I’m not complaining. I will do what you ask, goddess. But you promise their afterlife won’t be so gruesome?”
Katarzyna simply looked down with her brows raised.
“I know, I know it’s not my place to question you. But … for my peace of mind?”
Katarzyna cleared her throat. “I took away physical pain from my icy hell. My souls now wander an earthlike plain, devoid of spark and life. It’s still hell, you know. But the extreme suffering is gone. If only they knew they had you to thank for it.”
Oleńka nodded.
“With that settled, here’s what you’ll do …”
Culling
===
Radek looked at the copper-tinted coins in his palm. He examined one piece that had the profile of a man with a crown imprinted on it. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember what the significance of this regal-looking man was.
The outdoor market surrounding Radek hustled and bustled. Patrons shouted at merchants, deals were made, people were scammed. Baskets were filled with freshly harvested vegetables and meat from recently hunted game. The commotion hummed in the background of Radek’s mind as he rubbed the coins together between his fingers, feeling the metallic bumps catch and slide over each other.
A booming sound off in the distance caught his attention before anyone in the market noticed. Radek was the only one staring off into the horizon over the tops of homes and other structures. The ground rumbled under his feet tens of seconds after he heard the boom. While others walked and bumped into him, Radek’s eyes kept glued to the skies where he thought he heard the sound coming from. Another boom caused him to finely tune his ears.
The market gradually became quieter as the booms became more pronounced. Their feet tickled with the reverberations that followed a moment after the audible boom. Soon, items on the tables of the merchants were knocked over, some people lost their balance, and the bell at the top of the town hall’s steeple chimed because of the tremors. The stillness and silence from everyone became as eerie as the unknown quakes grew more frequent.
Radek saw her, causing him to fall to his knees. Over the tops of the buildings, he saw a giant woman. Although the word giant didn’t do her justice. The woman could only be described as a goddess, given her ethereal stature. Brunette hair tied in a loose braid complimented her earthy brown skin with matching eyes. Her clothing was modest: russet colored tunic that hardly came below her hips, black tights, and leather brown boots.
Though at the time Radek couldn’t see her entire ensemble, in the next few moments, he, along with everyone else in the kingdom, was going to become very familiar with the giant woman.
-
Oleńka felt her heart hammering in her chest at the sight before her. Under any other circumstance, it would’ve been delightful—cute, even! An entire miniature kingdom before her feet amid a scenic, tranquil backdrop of snowcapped mountains and verdant fields. But her goddess had enlarged her to over 2,000 feet tall, not for the novelty, but for an important task.
Like a fine layer of dust on the cellar’s ground floor getting pushed outwards from the displaced air of a footfall, so did the miniature environment ripple outwards from Oleńka castle wall-sized foot. First, the grass and trees swayed near horizontally from the forceful gusts under her foot. Then the earth yielded to her tremendous weight, boots sinking into farm fields like sludge, causing the land to rise around the outside of her boots like new islands spurting from the ocean depths. Oleńka watched the environment undulate from her footfall just as spilled ink soaks outwards into parchment. The shockwave shot out at the speed of sound, fading the further out it went.
Oleńka watched the devastation with rapt attention, the environment bending to her unbelievable presence. The edge of the kingdom, where the first homes started, was two large paces away. She took another step with her left foot. The shockwave from her footfall reached the homes this time. The enormous woman saw and heard windows popping, causing her to flinch.
“Sorry,” she whispered, catching her first glimpses of fennel seed-sized peasants running for their lives. “C’mon, this way.”
Oleńka took a long step with her right foot, encouraging stray peasants to not run into the field, but into the capital city. She misjudged the impact of her step, as the proximity shockwaves were enough to stop and restart heartbeats. Slight frustration exited Oleńka’s lips in the guise of a sigh. She waited for the tiny people to get back on their feet and run into the city. The giant herded both people and livestock using perfectly placed steps to guide them into the city.
-
Chaos broke out as the giant woman came closer to their city. Her height continued to shoot up into the air, and her enormousness continued to expand. Their minds could not comprehend her size, appearing as an impossible illusion. When they thought she was a step away, she was in fact much further out. Now that she was upon the city’s borders, her visage dominated the skies and their minds.
The shrill scream of a woman shattered their trance. They broke out in a frantic run for their lives, heading in the opposite direction of the giant. Loud panic swept throughout the kingdom. Confused citizens came out of their homes and looked up into the sky where people pointed, bewildered at the sight before them. There stood a giant woman with a look of both trepidation and caution as she came upon their peaceful city. The citizenry poured into the streets and joined the masses as they evacuated through cramped and windy roads.
The shockwaves from the giant woman’s footsteps were becoming worse. Cobblestone roads bounced and shot people a foot off the ground. Some of them sprained their ankles upon landing, most others lost their footing and knocked over each other like dominos.
Crunching and splintering noises behind them gave clues that the giant was treading upon their homes on the outskirts of the city. They renewed their efforts and trampled on their neighbors, scrambling madly to escape. As the giant tread upon their buildings, the booming steps didn’t have the same springing effect they once had. Structures had this guttural sound of crumbling and ripping apart as her leather boots flattened neighborhoods in a single step. The earth below them groaned, distressed by the impossible force of the giant.
-
Two dozen highly dense homes disappeared under a single footstep. Oleńka silently apologized to the people whose homes she destroyed. She lifted her left boot and hung it over another district on the edge of the city. To her, the soles of the boots hung a mere inch above the tallest roof. She let it hang there, giving any citizens foolish enough to still be there a chance to escape. Slowly she lowered her boot, the roofs of many homes offering little resistance.
It felt like she was stepping on structures made of brittle sticks and crummy plaster. The tops of the structures disintegrated until all the building materials compressed under her weight, forming a concentrated mass of masonry and lumber. But Oleńka’s weight did not stop there. Her boot kept shoving and compressing countless buildings into the earth, fusing all the structures together into an unrecognizable deposit deep underground.
The level of destruction left by one footfall never ceased to amaze Oleńka. She wasn’t trying to be destructive. They were steps! As if walking on eggshells. Yet, her footsteps had a cascading effect that rippled outwards. Her quakes cracked, not only the foundations of buildings but the earth itself. Fissures webbed outwards from her foot, some large enough to swallow buildings. Everything seemed so … fragile, given her colossal size.
Oleńka's feminine footsteps weren’t random or malicious. She strategized her steps to push the people of Krasomor out in one direction. The city shape looked like a rough rectangle from above, with the palace off centered so the river cut around and the mountains were in its backdrop. As Oleńka entered from the west, she stepped on the outer border of the city to push everyone east of it. Not too dissimilar to a cattle dog herding oxen by running back and forth to catch stragglers, while pushing the herd in one direction, so was Oleńka herding the people towards the east.
Hundreds of buildings disappeared under her feet as she decimated the western portion of the city. She hoped she’d given the people ample time to flee their homes and run through the city before trampling them. She didn’t want to think or even entertain the notion that she crushed slower folks along with their homes under her boots. In her mind, her slow-moving steps and overbearing presence should’ve given them enough time to spot her and evacuate properly.
Oleńka felt a little apprehensive about crushing a temple next. Was it blasphemous to crush a place of worship of the pentagods? She dismissed the notion, since she knew Katarzyna would protect her from whatever wrath might come from the gods.
The temple crushed like a pile of dried autumn leaves. Oleńka had to put in extra weight to flatten the shin-high structure, unaware she was crushing 18 people who took refuge in the temple. With several more stomps, she took down the temple completely until there was nothing more than crushed, powdery stone compacted under several of her giant footprints.
Oleńka wiped the sweat off her brow and flicked her hand. A fine misting of her salty sweat raining down on the evacuating people. She looked at her work. Only five stomps into the city, and there was plenty more to go. She looked at the network of streets and was satisfied to see a thick mass of people running towards the east. She got back to work and stepped into another neighborhood she hoped was empty.
-
Radek ran westward. He fought against the current of people to get to his home before it was too late. The giant’s shockwaves rattled his ribcage and messed with his lung's ability to draw air. He couldn’t decide which was worse: the shockwave or the vicious quakes. Determined to get to his home, he ignored the physical effects and presence of the giant as he burst into his home.
“Brana, are you here? Wife?” Radek shouted. He looked around his house and saw chaos. Furniture and many smaller objects thrown to the ground from the giant’s quakes.
“I’m here, Radek!” she said, popping her head from the cellar door on the floor. “What the hells is that?”
“That’s not important! We must flee.”
“No, come here into the cellar. We can seek safety in here.”
“I doubt that will be enough. The giant … she is immense. Come, I’ll help you out and—”
Radek was cut off mid-speech as the giant’s footfall landed squarely on his home and neighborhood. Their minds could not judge or accurately estimate the giant’s impossibly enormous strides. Though she was on the other side of the city, in one simple step, she was upon them. The shadows that enveloped them lasted a mere fraction of a moment. The crushing from the roof of the house all the way into the earth, past the cellar, occurred in less than a second. At the very least, Radek and Brana’s death came swiftly and without pain.
-
Oleńka walked in a zig-zag pattern throughout the city. Teeny people, smaller than her pinkie fingernail, flooded into the streets, streaming away from her. Her walk was like a casual saunter. The areas where her foot landed seemed deserted. She felt bad for crushing their homes, but at least she wasn’t taking their lives—or so she thought.
The giant mortal woman paused for a second to look at the hysterical city run from her. If she really wanted to, she could overtake them. She would walk ahead and create a canyon-like channel with the heel of her boot. Then she would walk in circles, slowly moving inwards until she crushed them all.
She shook her head. What an awful thought. They should pray and give thanks to her that she wasn’t so cruel. For the task her goddess gave her, she could’ve approached this much differently. Instead, she gave the people a real chance of escaping. But this thought saddened Oleńka, because at the end of the day, everyone in the city would be dead.
-
Peasants and nobles alike shoved their way through the lesser dense parts of the city in the east, which gradually gave way to stables, farms, and then open fields. It seemed as if the entire city came out to a fair or jousting competition; however, the screams and the panicked cries said otherwise.
The rhythmic booms and quakes fed their adrenaline. Throngs of citizens entered the open fields without taking notice of the large, enigmatic etchings in the field. The tree line that led to the forest was thousands of feet away and would take a solid 15 minutes of running to reach. But because they were in a valley, surrounded by natural barriers, the forest was really the only direction they could go.
-
Oleńka had reached the center of the city. Looking down at the swarm of people, she could see the majority had made it out of the city. For fun, she stomped her right foot down hard on an untouched district. The cataclysmic ripple shot in a perfect circle from the ball of her foot. It crumbled weaker structures and fractured the stronger ones. Her eyes followed the ripple until it reached the people. She giggled lightly as she saw them fall to the ground as if the rug was pulled right out from under them. They were at least one body-length away from her, and yet, her foot stomp had enough force to blow them over.
Oleńka self-reflected and wondered if this is why Goddess Katarzyna called her an insect all the time. Was this how the gods saw mortals? As amusing creatures with inconsequential lives? Oleńka didn’t like that thought. Though she was an unfathomable gigantic mortal right then, she was, and will always be, an amusing insect for the goddess to play with. If it weren’t for her strong-willed mind that was invincible to the goddess’s memory altering powers, she could’ve been one of the dot-sized people fleeing the city. Her life could’ve easily been as insignificant as they were.
The giant mortal sighed and pushed those troubling thoughts out of her mind. She reminded herself she was not like those tiny mortals running from her feet. She won favor with the most powerful goddess in the universe, and she would serve her well. If her goddess won her secret war with the other gods, it would only leave her as the supreme ruler of the universe.
And Oleńka would stand by her side.
Maybe she would have a mini-throne next to the goddess. Or maybe a few powers to play with if Katarzyna was still willing to give her some. Was it too late to ask to be a demi-god?
Oleńka quickly annihilated two more districts under her feet. She didn’t care or lust for power. Her position and role seemed fair enough. Sure, from an outside perspective, like the mortals fleeing the city, this seemed beyond reprehensible. But what could Oleńka do about it? It’s either follow the goddess or go to hell.
Her next footfall came closer to the east edge of the city. She showed no more sympathy for the stragglers still in the streets. She had given them an ample amount of time, and if she didn’t hurry them up, her goddess would be displeased. Oleńka saw seven people disappear under her next step, taking with it 14 homes. It was like trying to herd a litter of kittens. Maybe this was why Katarzyna got so angry when Oleńka pushed back, even a little, against her commands.
The giant looked out in the field and saw tens of thousands of people running across waist-high grass. From her vantage point, she could see the etchings in the ground that the tiny mortals could not. A perfect circle and inside, a five-pointed star in the center. With the bulk of citizenry inside the circle, it pulsed a deep purple glow.
-
Their screaming reached a fevered pitch when an energetic purple wall shot out from the ground, encasing them in a gigantic ethereal cylinder. Those brave enough, or stupid enough, to touch the barrier were sent back by a non-lethal electrical blast. There were at least a hundred citizens trapped outside the cylinder. Some families separated because they were a few paces too slow or too fast. The mortals stuck outside were unsure if they lucked out or not.
The ground underneath hummed with electrical energy. The waist-high grass and vegetation surrounding them faded into the wind. They exchanged a few nervous words for a singular moment before noticing the mud beneath their feet transform into a starry night sky in a matter of seconds. It felt like they were standing upside down on top of the night sky. A flat, invisible plane kept them from falling into space.
The tens of thousands had their hearts stutter in unison, as a crippling dread blanketed over them. A hole, larger than the giant woman, punched through the world, and in its place was the twinkling twilight of deep space. The stars formed unknown constellations and looked disturbingly different from the midnight heavens that graced the kingdom.
A shadowy figure swam through the astral expanse, blocking out the glittering backdrop as it drifted like an octopus. What appeared as tendrils flowing behind the creature turned out to be fabric from a dress.
The plane the tens of thousands of citizens stood on gave out like a snap. They dropped with gravity that surpassed Earth’s. They fell, kicking and screaming, through the silence of space. Oxygen and warmth still existed, though they couldn’t care less about those details. The sheer mass of people funneled at different speeds and looked like molasses poured into a large cup of water.
A crackling roar sounding both like a grizzly bear and lion drew their eyes to the shadowy behemoth flying through the astral expanse. Light from an unknown source illuminated her. It was Goddess Katarzyna.
She wore a sparkling red dress, cut at an angle over her upper thigh. Jewelry as large as asteroids adorned her slender neck, wrists, and ankles. Her blond hair fluttered behind her head, her eyes locked with the people of Krasomor.
Her lips, which had a fresh coat of red lipstick applied on them, spread open for her wet tongue. She appeared starved as her entire body drifted and aligned with the falling mass of people. The goddess opened her mouth wide.
While falling through the cosmic darkness, the mortals felt a coldness expand from their inside out to their skins. They glowed white temporarily as their ghost-like souls left their bodies. The people of Krasomor knew what they were experiencing. Their goddess, the ruler of the kingdom since the beginning of time, was harvesting their souls.
They reached out and grabbed onto their celestial twin. “Don’t let go!” Among the screams, the people begged their souls not to let go, based on the belief that a soul reap like this, as opposed to natural death, damned them for all eternity.
Mortals and souls were entangled in a fiendish waltz through the cosmos. Their arms held onto the transparent white spectre, trying with all their might to not lose their souls. At the other end, the goddess with her mouth open, creating a black hole force of gravity that vacuumed their souls. One by one, like shooting stars, souls streaked across the night sky and got sucked into Katarzyna's mouth. She was a cosmic whale, devouring krill-like souls by the thousands.
And while Katarzyna consumed their souls, the tips of her lips bent upwards. She was smiling. She extended her arm as she glided through the frictionless expanse of space. Each screaming and crying soul fading into the back of her throat. Each insignificant soul added to her already enormous size.
She grew as she consumed.
The mortals who had lost their souls stopped falling. They floated, stunned and appalled at what they witnessed. Souls from the entire kingdom slipped right into the goddess’s esophagus with her making slight open-gulp gestures.
The streak of ghost-like souls was so thick, so dense, it was bright as a star—until they entered Katarzyna’s mouth.
The goddess was an arm’s length away when she finished consuming the last of the kingdom’s souls. She was half a size larger after consuming the essence of 40,000 people. She had a post-coital bliss glow about her. Eyes closed, head tilted up and to the side, tongue reaching out to lick her lips. “Ahhhh,” she hummed.
The mortals suspended in the middle of nothing had ceased screaming and crying. They felt mortified … stuck in a daze. But there was a huge emptiness in them. Passionate emotions like sadness and happiness were all gone. They could only feel hopelessness and fear. Even the emotion of hate, which would’ve been appropriate for the goddess, was absent. Their mortal bodies were husks with no spirit except for the uncomfortable emotions they felt when they knew doom was impending.
Goddess Katarzyna propelled herself forward with her mouth reopening. The mortal shells were about to experience the hell in her stomach before fading into nothingness, while their souls moved on to Katarzyna’s hell. Body and soul, separated for all eternity.
Her first gulp sent thousands to her stomach. She spent more time with each successive mouthful, enjoying the rich, complex flavors of the mortals she consumed. The mortals that were frozen in space could do nothing but wait their turn to be eaten. They were nothing but dust to the goddess.
-
Oleńka stood with her jaws dropped. She, along with the other mortals, didn’t know what the hells they were looking at. The hole in the earth seemed to open into outer space. But how was that possible? Even from Oleńka’s angle, it looked like the outer crust of the earth was parchment-thin. The parallax in viewing the hole from an angle really confused her mind.
As Oleńka walked left and right to look at the hole, she saw the stars zip by. Her fun ended when a bare arm came out from the hole. She recognized the creamy-white arm belonging to her goddess. Though it was slightly … bigger than she remembered. Kat’s forearm was about as long as Oleńka was tall. The hole in the earth hardly accommodated the extremely titanic goddess’s arm.
The hole, leading to the center of the universe, expanded as the goddess pulled herself back to Earth. Her fingers splayed outwards to the sky before her wrists tilted back down. Her fingertips came crashing down into the soft earth, crushing as many as five people per digit. Survivors of the portal trip, and the subsequent fingers of the goddess, spread out and ran towards the edges of the fields or took their chances by returning to the city. The goddess’s other arm came through the portal, followed by her head and then shoulders.
Oleńka wondered if she should help the goddess or not. But in her hesitation, she saw Katarzyna didn’t need help. Her body elevated smoothly through the portal—and as Kat’s new size became apparent to the giant mortal, she realized she couldn’t help even if she wanted to.
Legs that went on forever came out of the portal. Kat’s feet were adorned in open-toed stiletto heels that matched her arterial-blood red dress. Her right foot came down on two dozen fleeing citizens who had no hope of escaping the moon-sized ball of her foot. The impact was exponentially greater than Oleńka’s footsteps from earlier, which were cataclysmic in their own right. The goddess’s footsteps presented forces parallel to the explosive creation of the Earth. Kat’s shockwaves were enough to make Oleńka flinch and hold her arms out to maintain balance.
As Katarzyna pulled her left foot out of the portal, it sealed shut, returning to an unassuming field. Katarzyna set down her left foot on the restored terrain. Her soles sunk into the earth until her exposed black nail-polished toes were level with the brown dirt surface, creating a crater suitable for a deep fishing lake. Kat’s weight stressed the bedrock deep underground, reforming aquifers and altering subterranean geology with a force that only a volcano could achieve. Her heels applied more Newtonian force than the nearby mountain range.
Katarzyna shook her head, tossing her blond hair behind her shoulder, altering the cloud formations in the atmosphere. She rested her right hand on her hip as she shifted all her weight to one side as she struck a pose.
Oleńka, no taller than the bottom of Kat’s knees, tilted her head back to behold her goddess, only able to see half her approximately 1.5-mile-long body. Kat’s dress was so revealing that it would’ve sent the clergy into righteous fits had the goddess not consumed their souls prior. Oleńka couldn’t get over Kat’s defined legs, which struck the right balance between meatiness and suppleness. Soft shadows cast over quads and hamstrings, her calves popping because of her 450 feet tall heels. Gazing higher, Oleńka marveled at how the red dress draped over the shelf of Kat’s ass. Her goddess rocked the red dress like nothing she’d ever seen before.
“You did well, my little mortal,” Katarzyna said.
“Little?” Oleńka made an incredulous, scrunched-up face. “Who you calling little?” She held out her hands with palms facing skyward. She then walked in a tight circle, her plain brown leather boots crunching and flattening untouched portions of the city like brittle seashells. After completing the circle, she looked back up at the goddess and said, “I don’t know if word’s gotten to you yet, Kat—but uh, I’m kinda a big deal around here. Just saying.”
Kat’s expression remained stoic, though the tiniest, perceptible grin formed on her lips. She stepped forward with her right foot. Oleńka took a breath as she followed the heavenly legs down to her feet, where she just caught the glimpse of 30 fleeing peasants vanishing under Kat’s ornate stilettos. Oleńka could hear the world groan under the celestial weight as Katarzyna cracked the continent’s tectonic plates.
Though Oleńka created fissures on the surface of the Earth like cracks through a cheap pane of glass, Kat’s footsteps were far more devastating. The subterranean pressures from her foot caused geometric patterns on the surface to form and then burst outward. She created new shelves of land surrounding her foot. Jagged rock faces and canyons jutted out of the land like the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland. Oleńka watched as the buildings bordering the open field fragmented and shattered under the catastrophic terrain transformation.
And all Katarzyna did was take a step.
The goddess squatted as gracefully as a panther to close the gap with her less than two-foot-tall mortal, who was also a titanic giant. Katarzyna hooked a stray lock of hair behind her ear as she regarded her adorable companion.
“‘Big deal,’ you say?” Katarzyna asked, her breath blowing Oleńka’s brown hair back. “I would never have guessed it.” She gave Oleńka two gentle pats on the top of her head with her index finger.
“Really?” Oleńka asked. “Town crier never got to ya?”
“He did,” Katarzyna said, cocking her head to the side with a grin. “He, along with the commonfolk of this dreaded kingdom, reached me. But they have long forgotten of you once I graced them with my presence.”
“I, um … Oh?” Oleńka had a hard time looking back at her goddess in the eyes.
“Go on, Oleńka. Ask me. I know you desire to know what I did.”
“Sure … What d'ya do?”
Katarzyna opened her mouth just a hair and used her middle finger to rub the corner of her right lip. “Reaped what is rightfully mine. I drank their souls and devoured their physical shell. Every last one of them.”
“Y-you ate them?” Oleńka asked without the usual flair in her voice.
Katarzyna nodded with a bright smile. “Thanks to you.”
Oleńka was crestfallen. “I-I guess the royal census is gonna have it easy this year?”
Katarzyna made a ‘J’ with her index finger and used her knuckle to lift Oleńka’s chin up. “They’re in a much better place—where they can serve me for eternity. Isn’t that ideal?”
Oleńka masked her shocked emotion. “Y-yeah. If you’re happy, Kat, then I’m happy.”
“I swear, I could not have found a better companion than you, Oleńka.” Katarzyna gave her 2,000-foot-tall mortal a pat on the back before standing back up.
She walked forward with Oleńka between her legs as she stepped into the city. Her footwear brought unfathomable damage to the city. The shockwaves from her footfalls were an invisible force that plowed through city districts without any hint of resistance. Katarzyna placed both hands on her hips and looked at the mostly deserted kingdom. Moonlike craters sprinkled through the city where Oleńka walked. Plumes of black smoke from unseen fires billowed throughout the rubble.
The palace, with its grand spires and high walls, stood defiantly off to the side of the goddess. Katarzyna lifted a finger and swiped it mid-air between her and the palace. An invisible line cut through the top half of the palace. The top fractured piece stood for a second before sliding and crumbling downwards. A mixture of dust and smoke shot up into the air as the palace collapsed on itself.
The goddess’s eyes moved throughout the haphazard grid pattern of the city. Her senses picked up life and found the city to still have hundreds of survivors hiding in their damaged structures or under rubble. Katarzyna thought for a moment. To herself, she counted several hundred creative ways of wiping the kingdom off the map. But then she looked down at Oleńka, who stared back up at her like a patient puppy.
“I have one last project for you, Oleńka.” She turned, her steps burying hundreds of densely constructed buildings under her soles, while the spikes of her heels sheared through structures. “You will destroy everything in this kingdom and then bury it under the land. I have consumed the memories of everyone living here. Now you will rid of any physical evidence the kingdom ever stood in this valley.”
“Oh. That’s, um … Okay—I guess.”
“What’s on your mind, Oleńka?”
“Um. No. It’s okay, goddess.”
“Kat.”
“It’s okay, Kat. If that’s what you w-want me to do.”
“Tell me.”
“I don’t want to complain. Remember last time? The whole hell threat and all?”
“Very well. I command you to tell me what’s on your mind.” Katarzyna crossed her arms and shifted her foot, smashing through homes and survivors without feeling anything.
“So, can’t you just wave your hands and do all that yourself, Kat? Wait! Before you get mad, hear me out. … I’m not trying to get out of work! But these are mortals and their homes we’re talking about. I feel terrible for destroying them when I’m a mortal, just like them.”
“You are not just like them. You are my personal companion, and that position elevates you into a far greater being than these insects.”
Oleńka let out a despondent giggle.
“What is it?” Katarzyna asked.
“Well, you called me an insect, remember? So, it’s like an insect crushing insects.”
“It is.”
“Dammit, why’d you have to say that! I was fine with ‘Oleńka, you’re elevated and cool as shit!’”
“I never said that.”
Oleńka sighed and rolled her eyes.
“Aren’t you the least bit happy doing this for me? No mortal has ever wielded this much power! No mortal has ever towered over and destroyed a city in the name of a goddess like you are now. You should count your blessings and enjoy this gift.” In a quieter voice, she said, “Imagine, for a moment, that you are using your inherent powers. Imagine this is your will, and there’s no one to stop you. Enjoy yourself, Oleńka. I saw you smiling before while treading upon this anthill. I would like to see more of that.”
Oleńka bit her lip and remained silent. She turned her head when she couldn’t take more of the goddess’s piercing blue eyes.
“Do me this, my friend, and I’ll reward you with a day off. You can lie in bed all day and have all the food you want … 20 servants at your disposal to fulfill your every need for a day.”
“You know what I want,” Oleńka huffed while crossing her arms.
“Lots of mortals with exquisite penises?”
“You’re forgetting big, too!”
-
With the goddess gone, Oleńka had the arduous task of purging the city from existence. No longer was the giant woman stepping lightly through the city. She was stomping it beyond recognition. It amazed her to see so many people still alive and running in the streets. How they survived her initial sweep through the kingdom was beyond her. They must’ve had nerves of steel and incredible luck for her to miss them before.
Whereas before Oleńka left gaps in her footsteps, this time she was much more methodical in her demolition of the kingdom. She left no structure intact and no neighborhoods left standing. This level of destructive force encouraged those who sought shelter to make a run for their lives, linking up with other mobs of people trying to escape.
Oleńka sighed when she saw the gaggle of what appeared to be three dozen people running down the winding streets from her. She wished these stubborn folks would’ve gone down the portal earlier so that the goddess would’ve dispatched them instead of her. Oleńka lifted her foot high and slammed into the ground on top of them. She crushed them all in a flash under her boots. It was the least she could do for them. A swift, painless death.
Oleńka felt conflicted the entire time she destroyed the miniature city. She had sorrowful empathy for the mortals, but an occasional smile or giggle would betray her emotions. She was only in this position because of Katarzyna. If she had this gigantic power all to herself, she’d do something else with it. Oleńka would help them with their farming, protect their city from natural disasters, and help construct buildings with her giant stature. Flattening and burying the city would’ve never entered her mind.
She laughed as she kicked what remained of the palace and its walls. Oleńka shook her head. Such strange emotions would enter and leave her mind. She should’ve been disgusted by all this. She balled her hands into a fist and brought it down on soldiers in red garbs escaping the collapsing palace. Oleńka knew it was wrong … but it was what the goddess wanted. Her mind torn, she allowed herself to go through the motions of completing the goddess’s task. But she decided then, if she had her own powers like Katarzyna suggested, she’d use it for the good of humanity.
Little did Oleńka know, the goddess read her mind and was disappointed by what she learned.