“Ahhhh… where… where am I?” Her voice was delicate and
refined, yet as all-encompassing as the wind.
The flash was bright enough to seem like a meteorite , but any heat
it produced was a nuisance at best. The real calamity was what it
left in its wake.
“Wha… what is this place?”
In only a moment, a vast swath of the city’s skyline had been
replaced by an oblong range of oddly-shaped hills, the buildings in
their place only assumed to have been crushed underneath. Hills that
had long, lustrous hair the color of the sky moments before the sun
rose, garbed in fine silks as stylish as they were functional for
battle. Hills that moved, breathed, shifted, causing quakes even as
she slowly began to come to, sitting up with unfathomable, paralyzing
slowness as the city held its breath in fear.
This woman was Sheila. A warrior from another world. A noble who fell
from grace, and in a moment of great folly, she took her mother
country with her. But despite the pain she’d endured, Sheila came
to realize that the only constant in life is change, and that
embracing it, rather than running from it, was the most crucial
lesson one could learn in this life.
But that didn’t explain how she found herself teleported into the
middle of the metro area at toughly three thousand feet tall.
Sheila was now sitting, a brilliant black and white, silk-clad peak
rising above it all. She clutched her knees as she examined the
ground.
“These are… are these… buildings…?”
It was inconceivable to her. Even the most massive of these
structures seemed only to go up to her ankles. And yet… as she
looked out across the afternoon horizon, at the massive sprawl of
gray interspersed with green, their grid-like arrangement, Sheila
soon came to realize that could be the only explanation.
Then, another flash of light from above, and:
“Ouch!”
Sheila grit her teeth, feeling something small bonk on the top of her
head. She turned, seeing a pair of items fall, their massive size
bulldozing wide, shallow paths into the surface of the earth.
Sheila recognized these as her sandals.
“Oh… they must’ve arrived shortly after I did.” It
made sense, she realized, as she scrunched her toes, each one of them
building-sized in its own right, bare as they dug ten little trenches
into the residential district.
Then, Sheila began to stand up.
The anxious populace began to break down in panic as this massive
humanoid creature propped herself on her fingers, lifting herself up.
Her feet lifted out of their resting places, two dominant piles of
pure flesh, bone, and muscle, fitting of the seasoned fighter. Her
toned, slim ass was so large, the idea it could possible leave the
two pits it had carved so deeply into bedrock was inconceivable. And
yet, it lifted, hundreds of tons’ worth of ambient sediment and
clay falling away as she finally stood to full height, dwarfing all
but the tallest mountains on the planet.
Sheila took a glance down at the impression of her unconscious form,
permanently etched into the ground, untouched buildings rising out of
its border. She smiled wistfully.
Then Sheila sighed. She would need to figure out some way to return
to her own world. And to do that, she had to find out more about this
world. And so, with a stretch that brought the pillars of her arms
skyward, she began to walk.
Order was breaking down in the city below. What had been merely
implied had now become a reality – this woman was about to step on
them. Already, she was rearing her utterly massive, milky white foot
to take that all-important first step. The umbra of the foot eclipsed
the sun, though its light still managed to pass through the crevices
between her five perfectly-proportioned toes, diffusing into a vague,
artificial twilight that mesmerized and horrified in the building
seconds before…
BRA-PHOOOOOOOOMMM!!!
Her toes came in first, clenching and clutching countless tons of
Earth to find its grip on the ground. Followed by the ball of the
foot, the most massive section, completely flattening countless acres
and hundreds of square-feet worth of the financial district. Followed
finally by the heel, smooth and elegant, its pressurized point drove
into the street, treating both people and vehicles with the same
level of discrimination: none at all. And like a whisper, utterly
uncaring of the countless lives that had just been reduced to atoms
as a result of its arrival… the foot left, preparing another step
to repeat the process, ad infinitum.
Or, was it?
Sheila had only taken a single step when she paused, her recently
placed right foot stilled, her left stuck in the dismount as Sheila’s
expression turned intense. Through the rubble and debris, those few
survivors that managed to dig out from the remains saw this, and in
their broken hearts, hope blossomed. This woman’s very existence
defied logic; was it possible that something had gone wrong, and was
preventing her from continuing this unknowing rampage?
A deep rumbling vibrated through the Earth.
Few knew what it was at first, until this rumbling resulted in more
buildings, collapsing into columns of dust, and out of that dust came
tannish-pink walls. Feet, toes, heels, expanding, growing in
magnitude, becoming even bigger. With horror, the populace let out
collective shrieks as Sheila’s footprint expanded, her entire body
growing taller and taller, planting her at an even 3,500 feet.
As her growth tapered off, Sheila let out several deep breaths.
“G-goodness…”
she heaved, finally free to finish her stomp, bringing her left foot
forward with meteoric force, crushing a crater into the crust of the
city. Only the highest of tall buildings now were able to exceed the
height of her toes, and of those, too many had already been
obliterated beneath her massive size.
“Could it be?”
Sheila pondered to herself, her analytical mind seeking to bring her
to conclusions as she tried to deduce the reason for her growth.
“...that I grew…
because of you?”
Experimentally, Sheila lifted her foot, building chunks and wreckage
still caught in the rolling wrinkles of the underside of her sole.
She angled it, pointing her toes downward as she balanced perfectly
on one leg. Then, crouching slightly, she lowered her foot, striking
red-painted toenails carving inconsolable gashes and untold
destruction, localized into a crescent.
Her toes were next, sinking with delectable softness as she pressed
down carefully, stopping. Then, Sheila carefully and precisely carved
an arc in the ground, feeling the pain, suffering, and terror of
thousands as she did it, drawing a path in the ground with her toes
that crumbled everything beneath. Sheila breathed, contented as their
emotions filled her, and as she did, so too did that euphoric
sensation arrive again. She began to vibrate unwillingly, and the
Earth shook again as Sheila shot up in spurts, a few dozen feet at a
time.
Sheila
almost gasped. “That
is… truly remarkable…!”
It would seem that the more people died, sacrificing their soles to
her feet… the more she grew, changing, shifting, becoming even more
massive.
Sheila
closed her eyes. As much as a shame it would be to lead to so many
deaths… she could not deny that the sensation of her growth was
almost as
addicting as the sensation of feeling so many people perish beneath
her soles. And as she grew again, short, several-foot bursts, that
need only became stronger.
This
must be a sign, thought Sheila. From the Goddess herself. She’d
spent her entire life trying to fight change, repent for the massive,
devastating changes she once brought to her own country. When in
reality, she should’ve fought to embrace
it,
this transient nature of life. That was the only way to truly repent
for the destruction of her own nation.
And what way to better drive that lesson into her thick skull than to
grant her such an immediate cause-effect loop, here in this strange,
small world, the destruction of their own nation in return for a
magnificent change experienced by Sheila herself?
With every alteration of the landscape brought about by her taking
mere steps, she would become bigger, metamorphosing, becoming closer
to what she was always meant to be!
It couldn’t have been more clear. This was Sheila’s destiny. And
if it meant wiping this nation off the map… she would be honored to
effect such a magnificent alteration to this minuscule land.
“My sincerest apologies,”
Sheila said as a thin smile curled across her face. Her hair
continued to shine, her clothes were luminescent, utterly sparkling
in the hot midday sun. “But
I intend to make this as quick as possible!”
And Sheila reared her leg up high, aiming for the nearest, most
untouched patch of grey little columns, as they got incrementally
smaller by the moment. Her incoming step caused gale-force winds
before she made any contact with the pristine buildings, whipping up
everything that wasn’t tied down – cars and people – into a
furious flurry just slightly tinged with the scent of her perfectly
perfumed, earth-scented toes. They were swept, crashing into the
dominating, flat, white, meteoric surface of her own foot moments
before it made contact with the land.
Until, finally…
SMA-SHOOOOOOOOSH!!!
It hit. The impact threw up countless metric tons worth of debris,
silt, rock, and organic matter, blended into a slurry from the utter
magnitude of Sheila’s weight. Sheila buried her foot within, the
imprinted earth feeling smooth against her sole, and she lost herself
in the bliss of feeling all their emotions, exponentially increased
as a result of her magnified size, a size that was only now growing
larger and larger as Sheila expanded.
“Yes…!”
Sheila could barely maintain her composure, wobbling and threatening
to come crashing down, a truly apocalyptic scenario. As it was, her
simply standing there was a cause for all those in the untouched
parts of the city to scream for the end-times. But here, in the wake
of the dust and debris sent out from such a forceful step, and her
subsequent size increase, the hopelessness of the situation truly
dawned on them as Sheila reveled in her ability to end life. A power
useful against fiends, seldom of use against humans, but in this
case, necessary for Sheila’s emotional metamorphosis to take full
effect.
The clouds bumped into Sheila’s head as she was jolted upward,
higher and higher, her size finally at last breaking through the
airplane line. Sheila was ecstatic, metaphorically gulping down the
heaps of emotional anguish and spectral energy that fueled her
growth.
“M-more!”
From the ground, Sheila’s voice was beyond a mere magnified voice.
It was the sound of death itself, trumpets of judgment, as she
braced, taking another sturdy step, crouching to maintain her balance
as her entire body shuddered. The people caught in the forming crater
of her foot, mountainous in its magnitude, were pulled down into the
deluge. Sheila’s perfect, slender red-painted toes clenched,
dragging in ample piles and piles of wreckage, rubbing them between
the toes and grinding them to mere moist dust. Sheila groaned. The
sensation of expansion was an intense one, but one that gave her no
end to the amount of emotional joy it brought about. The planes of
her footprints were already outgrowing their former divots they
created, her rolling flesh an encroaching wall that none could
outrun.
Sheila’s
knees were weak; as powerful the warrior was, she was forced to
double over as the immense pressure coursed through her. She stood on
her toes, her breaths shallow, even if every inhalation had the
collective volume of an explosion. “M-m-more!”
Her wishes were granted. As the pain of an entire population flowed
in through the bottoms of her soles thus fueling her growth, her mere
expansion was enough to end its cascade of lives, more and more
finding the encroaching surface area of her multitudinous, ample feet
impossible to avoid, driven underneath and being flattened,
smoothened, and functionally moisturized into their supple skin.
“Yes! Even MO
– whoa!”
Sheila’s ominous swaying finally caught up with her. Lost in her
revelry of pleasure and satisfaction, caught in a relationship
between herself and gravity with continuously shifting goalposts, her
balance lapsed, and in this fit she found herself falling, tumbling
down, down, backwards, directly on her behind.
KRACKOOOOOOOOOOOOM…!!!
“Ouch...!”
Sheila’s fall was a humbling experience for the swordswoman, a
reminder of her own capacity for folly. Her shoes, growing on their
own in their bull-dozing fashion, were only a pace away from her
landing area. Her butt’s impact had perfectly created two warm
divots to implant her derriere into, though that didn’t make the
slight ache hurt any less…
“Wait...” Suddenly,
Sheila realized it. Yet another smash, yet another region wiped off
the map. Her growth would happen any second now, though it seemed
this latest spurt was under an exceptional bit of lag.
“Hmmmmm...”
Sheila’s shoes close by gave her an idea. One that would be best
executed now, before her expansion truly commenced at snowballing,
runaway levels.
Sheila leaned forward, planting her elbow on her knee as she beheld a
graciously unscathed community nestled within the crook of her legs.
The people below saw her godlike face, and they cowered, fear
possessing them as many tried their best to hide in the buildings,
hide underground, do anything to avoid the seemingly innocent wrath
of this traveler from another world.
“Hello... your world certainly
seems pleasant enough.”
They shrank back in fear. She was addressing them directly. This was
unprecedented.
“It would seem my arrival has
spelled the end of your world… I can only imagine how scared you
must feel. But this doesn’t have to be the end. For any of us,
least of which for you.”
Then, she reached a hand downward.
Her slender fingers were coated in the deft cloth of her gloves,
though their fleshy pads were bare. They implanted themselves, one by
one surrounding the miniaturized city by their thick, girthy pillars,
digging underneath, carefully uprooting the upper surface of the
crust, until Sheila pulled out a singular section of the city.
“Don’t you see? Sometimes
change doesn’t have to be a bad thing. In fact, it can be the most
wondrous thing there is!”
Sheila smiled at the city in her palm, still mostly intact. With her
free hand, she grabbed her sandals, dropping them both in the empty
divot where the city once lay.
Sheila
handled the sandals with expert dexterity, arranging them upright
before carefully, carefully
placing the uprooted city onto the insole of the footwear. She broke
up the earth upon which the buildings lay – an easy feat – and
was able to evenly split the towns and buildings between both shoes
until there was a verifiable borough laying flat in both of her
sandals.
“Isn’t it grand? What a
marvelous change from your dreary wasteland. Now, you can remain with
me, within my shoes, worshiping my soles for all eternity. Wouldn’t
such... a change of pace be... simply magnificent?”
The flexible Sheila stretched her leg out, her bare toes twinkling in
the sunlight. She took one sandal in hand and then carefully,
carefully aligned it on her foot, tightening it. The people,
thousands, were horrified as they saw the pink mass arrive, closer
and closer, smothering them entirely, a move that – miraculously –
failed to completely obliterate them. No lives were lost in the wake
of Sheila equipping either of her moccasins, however that failed to
change the fact that entire contingents of individuals, families,
lineages, would be forced to live beneath the warrior woman’s heel
until she deemed it not so, only able to hope she would maintain this
level of hygiene for the duration of their stay.
“It’s... starting…!”
Sheila
had never forgotten her impending growth spurt, certain it would be
one for the history books. She was just finishing up tightening the
straps on her sandals when the deep RRRRRUMMMMMMBLINNNNNNG
reverberated
through her body and through the entire Earth, finally causing her to
jut out, expanding in her current, sitting position.
“Oh, oh… oh-oh-oh… oh, yes!
Indeed! Please, don’t stop!”
Sheila screamed out in deafening pleasure. She clenched and
unclenched her every tense muscle, stretching across the land as she
stretched across the land. Those within her insole witnessed as the
very surface of the shoe began to expand, becoming its own landmass,
even as her encompassing foot was its own doughy, pillowy sky.
“I can feel you… all of you!”
Sheila
chanted through grit teeth. “Dying
so pitifully, so easily… beneath me!”
Sheila was practically drooling as her growth began to level off. Any
semblance of a rough, uneven landscape was now completely unheard of
to her. In every direction she could see, there was nothing but more
smooth, mottled curves of the planet. Her growth had outpaced any
notion of a “horizon”, and yet it still continued if at a
(relatively) glacial pace. Nothing changed the fact that with each
passing moment, her prior growth caused yet more death, and only
those she chose to eke out their existence within her sandals were
exempt from this encompassing judgment of their new goddess.
Goddess…
That word danced on the tip of Sheila’s tongue as she panted,
slightly out of breath from the most recent growth episode.
It wasn’t a word Sheila was wont to take in vain,
But, yet… this was another world, was it?
The Goddess had no jurisdiction here… right?
And that would mean…
Sheila was
completely capable of accepting that title for herself.
“Ahhh... goodness! The way you
people just flatten is
simply impeccable…!”
As
Sheila relaxed, reclining herself on the soft, moist earth, she
stretched her entire body out once again, truly making the world into
her seat. Her hair flowed down the side of her head, a massive,
stilled waterfall of midnight that cut thousands and thousands of
ropes through absolutely everything in its path at the slightest
provocation. Laying supine, her hips, slender though they were, made
up the girthiest part of her body. Sheila giggled, feeling the slowly
collapsing infrastructure melting into dust against her
ever-increasing body size. She placed her hands on her chest, simply
content to do nothing except relax, allowing the ambient death to do
her work for her. A true goddess needn’t lift a finger to smite
those she deemed worthy of it. So what if this population, this
planet had done nothing wrong? Neither had she, back in her own home
dimension. The immense opportunities for transformation and change as
a result of Sheila flattening the landscape to smithereens would be a
boon for these people anyway.
Further
making herself comfortable, she braced against her elbows, truly
driving her
buttocks into the ground, surpassing the buildings, roads,
infrastructure, topsoil, soil, bedrock – her immaculate posterior
made mince of absolutely everything in her path. Sheila almost wanted
to drool, receiving a better feeling as the various pieces of the
city – and its cars and people – squirmed, driving themselves
into her crack, than the longest scratch. It was an unmatched
sensation of pleasure, and she never wanted it to end, slowly
spurting out several growths as she did it. Once she was through,
only her butt had done more damage and devastation to the city than
the largest nuclear bomb ever could – and it did so without
unleashing
the bio-weapon Sheila had stored of her own, something she was
grateful for. Despite everything, Sheila still had her sense of
decorum and reputation.
Well then, thought Sheila. She had played with these dust motes for
long enough.
Sheila
decided finally to stand up once again, propping herself on her
elbows as she slowly, sturdily, finally reached full height. Her form
was one that inspired fear, awe, and devotion. Sheila’s empathic
abilities allowed her to tap into the full breadth of emotions that
still swam around in the collective unconsciousness of the scant few
parts of the city she had yet to decimate, not least of which those
caught within her boots, already erecting shrines to their new object
of worship this very moment. It made her feel good. It made her feel
powerful. Feelings she was unaccustomed to. She always held the
weight of the world on her shoulders… it was time for a world to
serve her for
a change.
“Indeed... feel me…!”
Sheila stretched her limbs out, happily reveling in the fact that
each second was bringing even more hundreds of thousands of survivors
beneath the heels of her moccasins. The delineation between
atmosphere and space was becoming immiscible. The darkness of the
stars now hid at the top of Sheila’s world view. Meanwhile, as she
looked at the ground, the curvature of the Earth was becoming a
constant reality, no matter where she looked.
Suddenly, Sheila felt something wet.
Looking
down, she saw the ocean, her expanding feet having finally caught up
with its shores, lapping at her toes. Sheila giggled, just barely,
barely able
to make out the images of the tinies possible ships – fishing
boats, cruise ships, military carriers – caught in the whirlpools
formed by her shoes, crashing into the divots of her toes like the
maelstroms of Scylla and Charybdis.
“Perhaps the time has come to put this planet out of its
misery,”
said Sheila with a smile. Already, she was experiencing diminishing
returns from each passing moment. There were only so many lives to
end on the planet, and with the billions that had crushed so far, she
might as well end what was left all at once to experience a truly
euphoric high.
So, as Sheila stretched further and further into the heavens, she
raised one leg high above the crust of the planet, mirroring that
all-important first step she took what seemed like so long ago.
“I have to thank you. You people taught me a lesson I never
realized I forgot: change is
good. It’s inevitable. And now, I’m going to
give you all the greatest gift of change I possible can: when this
world is but dust, you can rest assured I will do my utmost to reform
the ashes into something beautiful. A place wholly dedicated to me
as its one TRUE Goddess!”
Sheila felt the rush. Never before had she ever said anything so
blasphemous. And it was in this rush that she brought her foot down,
heel-first, drop kicking the planet.
If earlier episodes were apocalyptic, this was the true definition of
Ragnarok. The Earth groaned, grumbled, and shook, eschewing matter of
all types. Molten stones were spat out, water raged, metal melted,
people on the other side of the planet fell to the ground in
prostrate before being decimated by the ensuing tsunamis,
circumnavigating the globe in a cleansing pattern. Sheila grinned as
she watched the Earth split apart like an egg, the red inner layers
casting a wondrous glow on to counter that white glow of the sun.
Sheila stood over the remains of the Earth, hands on her hips as the
primordial soup that once called itself home to nearly 8 billion men
and women lapped at her toes, barely singing the skin of this
universe’s new Goddess.
Her powers came easily to her, as she cracked her knuckles, shaping a
new planet out of metal and clay.
“The people who populate this
new celestial body will be devoted to me. But worry not…”
Sheila glanced toward her shoes, thinking of those trapped within
them. Generations would be born, live, die within those sandals, a
world that they would never be able to leave, forever protected by
the canopy of Sheila’s immaculate feet.
“You all will always hold a
place dearest in my heart.” Sheila
touched her heart once, filled with warmth before once again
returning to work in formulating a brave new world.