I was a young girl when I first saw the giant. I’d of course been warned to stay away from the mountain where she supposedly kept her lair, but other than that, she was just a rumor, a legend, a monster that nearly everybody claimed to have seen once or twice during the night but who never actually seemed to be around. So it wasn’t until the day I saw her that I actually fully believed she was real.

I still don’t know what brought her into Lucerne. Even in the stories I’d heard, she usually stayed away from the city. But that one night, she was walking right down the river, ankle-deep in the water with her head high above the nearby buildings. And I was watching from a covered bridge directly in her path, too scared to even consider running away as her shadow enveloped me.

And a leg twice as thick as I was tall crashed through the bridge. Thankfully, her path narrowly missed me—but even then, I was flung backwards as the bridge tore in half. With my adrenaline finally kicking in, I grabbed onto a wooden beam as the bridge collapsed into the water, and when it was finally still, I was soaking wet, but alive, hanging just barely above the water level and watching as the giant walked onwards, fifty feet of jet-black hair cascading behind her in the wind, not even seeming to notice the bridge she had destroyed. I could still hear her footsteps as I rushed home, and once I was hunkered in my room, I listened as what sounded like fireworks echoed through the night.

I’d learn in school the next day that those were the sounds of an army that wasn’t strong enough to take her down. Everybody there of course had many questions—whether she wanted us dead, whether the army could keep her out of the city, exactly how big she actually was—but the only question on my mind was whether she had a name.

"Evanna, wake up."

Startled, I quickly glanced around. Clearly irritated, Étienne waved his hand in front of my face again. "We've got a train to catch, Evanna," he complained. "I can't have you zoning out or we'll both miss it."

Right. We were bringing the last of our things to Lausanne today. I hadn't wanted to move out of Lucerne, but he said that to choose to stay would be tantamount to abandoning him, and that would make me no better than his last ex. Since we'd started dating, I'd promised I'd be better than her, and I didn't want to go back on that promise.

And so, despite having felt uneasy all evening for no discernable reason, I picked up my pace as I pulled the last three bags across the bridge and into the station.

And soon, we were on our way. I watched out the window as the familiar mountains vanished into the distance as the train sped through the countryside. Seeing me gazing out the window, Étienne put a hand on my shoulder. "Trust me when I say this is better for you, Evanna," he declared.

Of course. He knew what was best for me. That's what he'd been insisting from the beginning, and the reason he gave for why I should say yes when he asked me to date him. I hadn't wanted to say yes, but if that was what was best for me then I couldn't exactly say no.

"Talk to me, Evanna," he instructed. "You've been quiet all evening. How are you feeling?"

The straw fell; the mask dropped.

"I don't like this!" I confessed. "I was happy in Lucerne. I was safe, I had family, and I didn't feel like anything was missing from my life. I don't want to live in Lausanne, Étienne!"

Étienne looked me dead in the eyes as he removed his hand from my shoulder. "See, this is why you need me, Evanna. You're too weak to decide these things for yourself. You don't have the strength to decide what kind of a life you want."

But I had decided.

I hadn't ever contradicted Étienne to his face before. I knew that he wouldn't like that and that it wouldn't make anything better. Besides, I was probably in the wrong. But this time, I felt in the right.

And as my mind settled with determination on this conclusion, the urge to speak my mind started to course through my body in a way it never had before. He told me to never admit to myself when I was scared or angry, but I was scared and I was angry, and after years of pressing them down, the feelings had become too large for me to contain.

"…Evanna, are you all right?" Étienne asked, returning his hand to my shoulder.

And the moment his fingers made contact with my skin, there was a bright flash of light. Étienne yelped and jerked his hand away.

"What was that?!" he exclaimed.

And as I suddenly snapped back into the moment, I saw flashes of glowing energy flickering all across my body. Étienne was clutching his hand as if he'd been burned.

Étienne drew back away from me, stepping into the aisle in between the rows of seats. "I don't know what this is, but you need to stop it," he commanded.

"How?!" I asked, trying and failing to keep my voice calm as I pinned myself backwards against the window. 

It was too much. The feelings were too big to contain. I felt them welling up inside me, trying to burst out.

And I grew with them.

It was hard for me to notice at first. My first clue was that the space seemed tighter—as if the seat in front of mine had slid back. But as my head bumped against the luggage rack overhead, my elbow jammed into the top of my seat, and Étienne stared up in horror, the truth was undeniable.

"Stop this!" Étienne yelled. "How are you doing this?!"

I didn't know. I focused all my effort on trying to calm myself, to force my mind into order. But as the seams of my jacket stretched and tore, it was clear that it wasn't enough.

And as I looked around the car, I saw the passengers fleeing in fear into the next car. My first instinct was to run too. But they were running from me. It was impossible for me to run away from this.

But it wasn't impossible for Étienne. As my shoulder broke through the luggage rack sending my three bags falling to the floor, Étienne fled without saying another word.

And so I was alone, in a metal box that was gradually tightening around me. The seats underneath me buckled and collapsed, and I even felt the floor starting to crack under my new weight. I was being forced into a horizontal position, with one arm pressed against each side of the train and a foot against the door that Étienne had just passed through. My hair ties had apparently burst, and my hair was spread across several seats and tangled around my bags.

The floor finally gave out. As I fell down to land on the tracks below, the train tore apart around me. Moments later, the next car crashed into my legs and went careening off the side of the track.

And I did the one thing Étienne had always told me to never do—I acted on instinct. Seeing the terrified faces in the falling windows, I reached out a hand and grabbed the side of the car, with my fingers crashing through a window to give me a firm grip. I heard the screams of terrified people inside, but I didn't know whether they were more scared of the fall or of me. But one of those I could remedy. Carefully, I placed the train car on the ground and pulled my hand away.

Even now, I was still growing. I began to wonder whether it would ever stop, or whether I would just keep expanding forever, becoming larger than the mountains, larger than the world, larger than the galaxy, with no say in whether or not my existence would tear apart the universe.

And once again, I snapped back into reality. I was surrounded by sounds—apparently, we were near a town, as the police had come out in full force, with numerous cars and several helicopters. Suddenly feeling sharp pains all over my body, I realized many of them had guns.

"Please stop," I implored. "I don't want to hurt anyone." My voice was suddenly thunderous, a far cry from the near-whisper I usually spoke in.

I'd never been scared of heights, but the upright position I was sitting in had my head several stories above the ground, with my hands and legs farther below than they could ever possibly be. Those massive objects I was looking down towards couldn't be part of me; it made no sense. And yet there was no reasonably-sized body below my eyes—only a colossal statue that seemed to move at my command.

"I'll take it from here," an unfamiliar voice rang out over the scene. It seemed to be coming from above me. I looked up, and I saw a zeppelin, at the front of which was standing a person with a megaphone. I had no idea who this was, but the police apparently did, as I felt the gunfire stop and the cars and helicopters immediately began to retreat.

The zeppelin lowered down until the person speaking was at the level of my face. I tentatively held up a hand toward it, only to suddenly find my wrist wrapped in an enormous metal shackle, connected by a chain to the underbelly of the zeppelin. Within moments, I felt a shackle close around my other wrist too, and my arms were pulled forward. Soon, ropes were wrapping all around my body, and the zeppelin began to lift me off of the ground.

"Now who might you be?" the person with the zeppelin mused.

"I'm Evanna Schwarzschild," I replied in the quietest voice I could manage, "and I promise I don't want to hurt anyone."

The person didn't respond. My face was pointed towards the ground, but I had a feeling she was still there.

"Who are you?" I asked tentatively. "And what organization are you working for?"

"I'm Akita Catanne," she replied, "and I work for humanity."

The door closed. The ground disappeared in the fog below me. I was alone.

"Now let me make this perfectly clear," Akita declared. "The harness around your shoulders contains multiple extremely powerful lasers, and it's connected to your shackles. I don't know how strong you are, so I don't want to assume you can't break out. But know that if you do, the harness will immediately sever whichever limb you've freed."

"This is unnecessary!" I insisted. "You don't need any of this on me. I'm not trying to do anything wrong!"

Akita sighed. "That's what they all say."

The zeppelin had brought me to the mountains, where I'd been lowered into a dimly lit cave just barely large enough for me. Akita was standing on a balcony at the level of my shoulders, and two more balconies were underneath. My hands were pulled up above me and shackled to the ceiling, and my feet were shackled to the ground. So I couldn't move—at least, not without risking snapping the shackles and losing a limb. I didn't know the extent of my new strength, but I did know that the shackles weren't nearly strong enough to keep me contained on their own.

"So, I've got some questions for you," Akita continued. "What prompted you to grow tonight, and how long have you had this ability?"

"I have no idea," I replied. "This is the first time anything like this has happened."

Akita crossed her arms. "Tell me about the circumstances."

I explained everything I could think of—Étienne, the train, my reluctance about leaving Lucerne. As I explained, Akita bit her tongue and tapped her foot while taking notes.

Once I was done speaking, Akita spoke into a radio. "See if you can find her boyfriend. Étienne Duval. And check in Lucerne for any of her family members. Bring everyone you can find here."

I gasped. "Please don't—they didn't have any part in this!"

Akita scoffed. "You're not in a position to be making demands."

"How am I not?" I pleaded. "You've chained me up in a cave when I haven't done anything wrong!"

"It's not about what you've done," Akita replied coolly. "It's about what you have the power to do."

I cocked my head, confused. "And what is that?"

Akita laughed, and a pair of glowing wings unfurled from her back. She flew up towards my face and looked me dead in the eyes. "Do the math, Evanna. You're thirty meters tall and you weigh six hundred tons. I can think of twelve different ways you could kill me right now if you weren't restrained. You could choose not to kill me, of course, but that's not something you should be able to decide on."

"So what do you have planned for me, then?" I asked, dreading the answer.

Akita shrugged, slowly flapping her wings. "You'll be here for a few days. Maybe a couple weeks, depending on how long it takes us to figure out how your ability works. I'm reaching out to the government, and if you're lucky they might be able to put you to use."

Now I was confused. "You're not part of the government?"

"Oh, no, no, no, no, no," Akita cooed, "this is just a passion project of mine."

And it all clicked. The shackles, the zeppelin, the pit exactly my size, the resounding feeling that Akita had been absolutely prepared for exactly this.

"You built all this for the giant from the mountains," I realized.

"Exactly!" Akita replied, diving into a midair soumersault to land gracefully on her feet on the deck with her arms outstretched. She folded her wings and flashed me a smile. "I hadn't anticipated finding a second giant, but capturing you was a fantastic trial run for our plan to bring her down."

"I'm guessing you've tried to capture her before?" I pondered. "This seems like excessive measures to take for a first attempt."

"You're remarkably chatty for a captive," Akita observed. Without another word, she spun on her heel, a door opened, and she walked out.

I'd never been called chatty before. All of Étienne's friends had commented on how quiet I was, and Étienne said it was one of his favorite things about me. I didn't know what it was about Akita that had made me so talkative—perhaps I just didn't know of any other way to get out of this. But talking my way out had failed, which I suppose shouldn't have surprised me given my lack of inexperience in that area.

And so I stood as still as I could, terrified that even the slightest movement could snap the shackles and cut off my arms or legs. On the train I'd torn through metal without even trying, and I couldn't risk having that happen again. It wasn't long before I started getting sore. Standing up straight with my arms in the air wasn't exactly the most comfortable position, and the rock walls of the pit didn't provide any cushioning to lean against.

As far as I saw, there were two possible ways out of this. Firstly, if I'd been able to grow, perhaps I'd also be able to shrink back to human size. So I focused intently on trying to make myself smaller, to stuff all my feelings into a tiny space that could fit inside a human.

…no, this wasn't working. This left the one remaining possibility—to see if I could grow even more, to break out of Akita's harness before it could hurt me. If this worked, I had no idea how big I would become, but at least I wouldn't have to stay stuck in this pit anymore. So I let down all my mental barriers and let unmitigated feelings course through my mind.

But no matter how large my emotions were, I stayed the same size. This wasn't working. I was stuck here, so I might as well try to find a way to pass the time.

The wall in front of me was mirrored, and so I took a moment to examine my reflection. I was decidedly a mess—my hair was tangled around several pieces of broken metal, two small bushes, and my jacket, which apparently hadn't grown with me. My shirt and pants fortunately had grown, but they were a much tighter fit than they'd been when I was human-sized, and they were badly torn and tattered from outgrowing the train and from the gunfire. Since my glasses hadn't grown with me, I couldn't see much more detail.

But I soon realized I was seeing something else. This wasn't a mirror—it was a one-way window, and the lights in the cave were dim enough that I could see through if I carefully focused. There appeared to be several people watching me from behind the glass, and behind them were windows looking out to the night sky.

As I watched, someone who was almost certainly Akita approached the spectators and spoke. I couldn't hear her and without my glasses I certainly couldn't read her lips, but based on their startled reactions I could only assume she'd let them know that I'd noticed them. Moments later, the room was empty.

It took me a few minutes to realize I was wrong. They hadn't been reacting to me noticing them at all. I realized this when I noticed that the cave was shaking, and that rocks were dropping from the ceiling and bouncing off of my forehead and nose. And soon I heard the immediately familiar sound that twenty years before I'd mistaken for fireworks. Countless rockets were shooting across the sky towards the same colossal silhouette that had approached me along the river as I'd cowered on the covered bridge.

The giant was walking towards me again. And despite that I now equalled her in size, I was no less scared now than I had been then. Once again, I was frozen in place, unable to do anything but watch as her head moved in front of the moon, casting darkness over the scene and making it next to impossible for me to see any more of what was happening beyond the glass.

But the darkness didn't last for long. As I began to faintly hear Akita shouting, I saw the giant's hair starting to glow, brighter and brighter until it was even brighter than the moon had been. I could see clearly now—she was standing still, one knee on the ground, ignoring the rockets exploding against her skin. And as her hair billowed around her, her eyes started glowing even brighter—two points of light resembling stars but difficult to look directly at even through the mirror.

I heard Akita's voice yelling to dive for cover.

Everything lit up white.

And five extremely long seconds later, everything went dark.

The entire cave was collapsing around me. Glass and boulders rained down on my head and shoulders. And a pang of dread struck me as I realized that even the rocks surrounding my shackles were falling apart. There was nothing I could do as I was slowly enveloped by the collapsing rubble.

Snap.

The instant the chain to the shackle around my left wrist broke, there was a jolt of searing pain at my shoulder. And suddenly, I felt my entire body coming apart and drifting away, and I was small, so absurdly small, and the boulders crashing down on me were far larger than I was, and my left arm was gone.

I don't remember much of the moments following that—I was fading in and out of consciousness for a little while. I only remember three things: the relief as the boulders were lifted off of me one by one, the warmth of a hand gently closing around me with fingers as large as I was, and the rhythm of the giant's footfalls as she ran across the countryside with me in her hand.

I opened my eyes in an unfamiliar bed. Immediately, I leapt up, glancing around in fear. The bed seemed to be on a ledge overlooking a massive, brightly lit room with smooth stone walls, which clearly extended far below this level and far above the ceiling over my head.

I leapt backwards in alarm as I noticed a massive metal hand resting nearby. But after a moment, I realized it was motionless—perhaps it was a glove that the giant sometimes wore.

Where was the giant, anyway? I cautiously walked up to the edge of the ledge and examined the immense room, which I found to be mostly empty. On one wall was an enormous door. Perhaps the giant wasn't home right now.

"You're awake!" an excited voice suddenly rang out.

Startled, I whirled around and stumbled backwards, stepping one foot over the edge. Attempting to regain my balance, I flailed my arms—no, wait, my arm. Just one. I realized immediately that I wasn't going to be able to steady myself this way.

And a black-haired woman who appeared about my age rushed forwards and grabbed my hand, pulling me to safety.

"I'm so glad you're okay!" the woman exclaimed. "You were unconscious for days. I helped as much as I could but I didn't know if it would be enough—but now you're up and I finally get to meet you!"

I blinked, trying to process everything.

"What's your name?" I eventually asked.

The woman bit her tongue for a moment as if she was thinking. "You can call me Chiara," she eventually replied. A pause. "And your name?"

"I'm Evanna," I responded. "So, um, where exactly am I?"

"You're under the mountain!" Chiara answered, as if this explained everything.

"But why am I here? And wait, why are you here?" This was clearly the giant's lair—I had no idea why Chiara would be so calm here.

"I brought you here!" Chiara explained. "I needed to get you away from the Godslayers, after all."

The Godslayers—was that the name of the people working for Akita?

Clearly sensing my confusion, Chiara sighed. "I guess you're a bit slow on the uptake." Without another word, she popped a berry into her mouth, started running, and did a backflip off of the ledge.

I yelped in alarm and ran to the edge. And I saw that as Chiara fell, spinning gracefully in the air, her body was rapidly expanding. There was a deafening crash as her feet landed on the floor far below, and when she fully stood up, her face was high above the ceiling.

"Perhaps you recognize me now?" Chiara inquired. Despite the fact that she was speaking at a near whisper, her voice echoed off the far walls of the room.

My instincts kicked in and I fled, bolting for a door I'd noticed behind me. But Chiara was far faster: her hand shot towards me faster than I could have ever hoped to run, and her fingers wrapped around me, pinning down my arm and my legs. As I struggled, she lifted me off the ground and high, high into the air, level with her face, an abyss between me and the floor below.

"Stop struggling!" Chiara's voice rang out as I kicked and squirmed. "If I drop you it'd be quite the fall."

My efforts were futile. I gave up, going limp in her hand. "What are you going to do to me?" I asked weakly, my voice sounding overwhelmingly small compared to hers.

Chiara laughed. "Oh, you don't need to be afraid of me, Evanna. I can't do anything to you that you couldn't do to me—we share the same power, after all! And all my life I'd thought I was the only one. That's why I'm so excited to meet you!"

On the covered bridge, I'd faced the giant when she had no idea I was there, and even then I'd barely escaped. Now, I had her full attention, which was far, far more terrifying.

"So, do you want to join me here?" Chiara asked.

"Join you?" I asked, trying and failing to suppress the fear in my voice.

"Of course!" Chiara laughed. "I want to see your true form. Could you grow for me?"

I didn't know how to respond. I'd thought that my growth on the train was controlled my emotions, but I was far from certain, and my emotions weren't exactly something I could control.

"I don't know how," I eventually mumbled.

Chiara reached her hand back down to the balcony and set me down. I could tell she was trying to be gentle, but I still lost my balance and fell to the floor as soon as she removed her hand.

"Go in there," she directed, pointing towards the door I'd been running towards a minute before. "Take a berry, come back out, eat it, and you'll be your true size again in no time."

And I did as I was told. The room behind the door was lined with bushes, on which grew unfamiliar dark red berries. At the other end of the room was another door—an open one, through which I could see that this structure extended far beyond what I'd initially realized.

This was my opportunity to flee. There was no way Chiara could fit in here without shrinking to human size, and I was almost certainly a faster runner than her.

But where would I go? I'd foolishly given Akita my name, so if I returned to my old life she'd easily track me down. And my face was almost certainly all over the news after the incident on the train, so people would undoubtedly recognize me basically anywhere. No, I'd never be able to go back to being a human.

So it seemed the only person who would accept me was Chiara. I could tell she'd been lonely for a long, long, time, as I would undoubtedly be if I ran away now.

I took a berry and I walked back into the room. "I don't think I want to try jumping the way you did," I said to Chiara. "Do you think you could lower me to the floor?"

Chiara extended an open hand, and I climbed on. She slowly crouched down, careful not to shake me, and set me down. As she stood up, I looked up at her, towering ten stories above me. With one step she could flatten me instantly, but she was choosing not to.

I popped the berry into my mouth, and I chewed, swallowed, and grew.

This time, I grew much faster—I felt my entire body stretching and expanding at once, and I saw the ground falling lower and lower below me, and soon I was staring eye to eye with Chiara—two skyscrapers with human names.

Chiara stepped forwards and wrapped her arms around me, closing her eyes and smiling. I happily returned the hug.

"I've been wanting to be able to do that for so long," Chiara said as she released me. She gently took my hand and smiled. "This is going to be fun."

"Go ahead, try it out!"

I carefully clenched and unclenched the fist of the metal arm. I suppose it was my arm now. It still felt like it couldn't possibly be mine, but it responded as if it had always been part of me.

I gently rested my hand on the ledge, and I noticed a little bit of steam hissing out of the arm. I could barely see gears spinning within it. Watching it at a distance, it reminded me of the motion of construction equipment, only much more fluid.

"How did you make this so quickly?!" I asked Chiara in awe.

Chiara blushed. "I was a mechanical engineer back when I thought I was human. As a giant it's actually far easier for me to build things—I'll put together the general structures in my true form and I'll shrink down to tinker with the details."

I put my hands together, realizing it was the exact size and shape of my other arm. "And how did you get the measurements so accurately?" I wondered.

"I took a casting while you were sleeping," Chiara confessed, "so I measured that and multiplied by nineteen—my true form is exactly nineteen times larger than my human form, and I had a feeling the same would be true for you."

"And you said it'll grow and shrink with me?"

"It should, yes! I haven't figured out the pattern for what grows and shrinks and what doesn't, but these materials have all worked well before." She paused, as if searching her memory. "Oh, yes, you should try the blaster!"

"The blaster?" I asked, perplexed.

Chiara grinned. "I found out after a long time that my growth is fueled by an energy that's constantly burning within me. You have that too, and if you have the right technology you'll be able to release it!" She pointed her finger next to her eye. "Here, watch!"

And Chiara's hair started to glow and billow, and both of her eyes lit up brightly, as they had when she saved me from the Godslayers. She turned, and two beams of energy shot out from her eyes at the wall—which exploded. There was a deafening boom, and rocks came tumbling down, landing at our feet.

Chiara turned back to me and smiled. "Now you try! Start by extending your arm."

I did as I was told, reaching the arm forwards towards the new crater in the wall.

"Spread your fingers and put your palm at a 45-degree angle," Chiara directed. "Then start focusing energy into your hand."

And I did. I was surprised by how easy it was, but it felt almost instinctual. I heard a hum coming from my hand, which seemed to be rising in volume as the energy charged. And based on the flashes of light in my peripheral vision, it seemed that my hair was glowing and billowing, just as Chiara's hair had.

"And release."

A burst of energy shot out of my hand, hitting the wall. To my surprise, it was all gone instantly—I wasn't able to sustain a beam as Chiara had done with her eyes. And so the blast knocked me backwards, and I stumbled and fell to the floor. Falling at this size felt as if I was caught in extreme slow motion, but it didn't hurt any less.

Chiara instantly offered me her hand and pulled me up. "I'd say that worked perfectly!" she exclaimed, happily gesturing to the enormous cracks that had opened up in the wall around where my blast hit.

I rubbed the back of my head. "I guess I need to work on my balance, though," I realized.

"You know what, you're absolutely right!" Chiara exclaimed. "Moving around as a giant is quite different from how it is at human size. You need to be aware of your momentum—you won't be able to slow down easily, and quick movements can throw you off balance." Her face lit up as if she had an idea. "And I know exactly how you can practice. We'll need to be at human size, though—so blast me."

"Blast you?!" I asked incredulously.

"It's easier than trying to hit myself with my eye beams. That's what I've had to do until you showed up."

"Wait, is this the only way to shrink?"

Chiara nodded. "If you take a hard enough hit, your body is destroyed and you're left with a smaller one. So you were small when I found you because you'd lost your arm. It usually doesn't hurt, though. So go ahead, on three you can blast me and I'll hit you with my eye beams, okay?"

I was absolutely not comfortable with this, but I didn't want to make this any more difficult, so I obeyed. As soon as we were both ready to fire, Chiara counted down from three. As I unleashed the energy from my hand into Chiara's stomach, I felt Chiara's eye beams hitting me in the chest. And she was right—as my body disintegrated, it didn't hurt at all. Seconds later, I found myself at human size on the floor, with a human-sized Chiara grinning at me from a distance away.

"See, that wasn't so hard, was it?" she laughed. "Now come on, let's head to the city."

Chiara walked out of the optometrist's shop with a grin on her face. "Your glasses will be ready by tomorrow!"

"And they'll grow with me?"

Chiara nodded. "They're gonna be made of some unusual materials, but they can do it!"

"Wow," I breathed. "Thank you so much. How much is this costing?"

Chiara chuckled, and her hair and eyes started to glow. "It's free. I lit up and told her to get it done or I'd level the entire neighborhood."

I laughed. "Good one, Chiara. How much is it actually costing?"

Chiara cocked her head. "What do you mean?"

It hit me. "Wait, that wasn't a joke? You actually said that to her?"

"Well, yeah," Chiara replied, sounding confused. "Isn't that the most efficient way to get things from humans?"

I gasped. "Chiara, you can't just threaten people like that! Is that how you got my new clothes, too?"

"Look, I don't have any money, okay?" Chiara shot back.

"Okay, this is clearly extremely unethical. And won't it blow our cover? I thought we were trying to be inconspicuous here!"

"What does it matter if the humans figure out who we are?" Chiara asked. "It's not like they can do anything to us."

I sighed. "Come on, let's head to the bank—I'll take out some money and pay back all the people you threatened."

"You have money?"

I blushed. "I, um, actually got the silver medal in sport climbing at the Nairobi Olympics. Athletes don't get paid as much as one might think, but I've got more than enough to get by."

"Wait, you're an athlete?" Chiara asked, sounding surprised. "I'd never have guessed."

"You never asked," I pointed out.

"Well, I suppose it makes sense—I'd imagine being a giant makes you quite strong, even at human size."

That slightly irked me. "I like to think I got there because of how devoted I was to honing my skill."

Chiara shrugged, not seeming to notice the offence I'd taken. "Well, if this is how you want to spend your money, don't let me stop you."

As we headed onwards, I realized how odd it was to be back in Lucerne after everything that had happened. We walked past the ice cream shop where I'd met Étienne, the gym where I'd trained, the bridge where I'd first seen Chiara. I wondered whether she remembered that night.

And soon, I'd paid back two terrified shopkeepers, and Chiara and I were standing outside the ice skating rink.

"What are we doing here?" I asked.

"You need to improve your balance," Chiara explained. "Ice skating at human size requires similar coordination to walking at full size. So let's practice."

"I'm not sure I'm comfortable learning to skate while I still don't have glasses," I admitted.

Chiara grabbed my arm and pulled me into the building. "Come on, don't be a wimp. And if you fall, I'll catch you!"

And she was true to her word—when I fell seconds after stepping onto the rink, I landed in her arms. She gently and effortlessly lifted me back up, and held one arm around me as I tentatively took my first steps forwards.

"See, you're trying to move like a human," Chiara commented as I fell again and she caught me by my shirt. "You're thinking of the ice as an obstacle to get past. But it's actually an advantage—you're fast, you're graceful, you're superior. Use that and you'll be capable of things you never could do off of the ice." Letting go of me, she skated several quick circles around me, leapt into the air, twirled, and landed gracefully, sliding backwards around to support me again.

And I practiced. While I'd never skated before, I was certainly no stranger to training, and Chiara seemed pleased by my progress.

And then another skater joined us. She looked familiar—brown skin, a yellow shirt, dark hair with golden tips—but without my glasses I couldn't place her. Chiara seemed to recognize her, though—she drew back and her eyes narrowed.

"It appears you've made a friend, Chiara!" the newcomer sang out—and while I couldn't place her appearance, I instantly recognized Akita's voice. "I'm impressed; I had no idea you were capable of such a thing."

"Oh, you have no idea what I'm capable of," Chiara growled back. "What are you doing here?"

"Well, when somebody starts going around threatening people, it tends to draw attention," Akita explained.

I leaned over to Chiara. "See, I told you that was a bad idea!" I whispered.

"And I'm disappointed in you, Evanna," Akita chimed, turning to me. "I expected better of you than to associate with her."

"Well, it's her choice to make!" Chiara snapped. "Not yours. So either fight us or leave us alone!"

Akita was silent for a moment, as if lost in thought. "I'd only prepared to fight one giant today," she admitted. "If I attacked both of you at once I'd lose."

Chiara smirked. "Then you'd best leave us alone."

Akita nodded, spreading her wings. She then paused, taking one last glance at me. "Say hi to Étienne from me!" she intoned before leaping into the sky.

To Étienne?

"Hello, Evanna."

I whirled around at the sound of Étienne's voice. He was standing behind me on the ice, in shoes rather than skates.

"And who are you?" Chiara demanded.

Étienne ignored Chiara, looking directly at me. "That winged lady filled me in on what happened," he explained, "and personally I'm thrilled. Dating a giant is so much more impressive than dating an athlete."

"I'm glad you think so," I replied.

"So come along, then!" Étienne directed. "I've got three magazines waiting to do profiles on us."

I nodded, taking Étienne's hand. "I guess I'll see you later, Chiara," I sighed.

And Chiara skated between us, pulling our hands apart. "No!" she shouted.

I looked at her with bewilderment; Étienne looked at her with anger.

"She's not going with you," Chiara declared, facing Étienne. "She doesn't want to and you can't make her."

Étienne laughed. "And why exactly should we listen to you?"

"He knows what's best for me," I added.

"No he doesn't!" Chiara shouted. "He knows what's best for himself, and he tells you that's what's best for you too. And you don't have to put up with this anymore." Chiara skated up to Étienne, grabbed him by the throat, and lifted him into the air. "Go ahead, tell her the truth."

"The truth?" Étienne choked out.

"Say it now or I'll grow and flatten you," Chiara snarled.

"Okay!" Étienne gagged. "I saw Evanna as a trophy girlfriend. I wasn't ever trying to help her with her life. I admit it, now please let me go!"

Chiara released Étienne, and he fell, coughing, onto the ice.

"You should run away now," Chiara said coldly. "If I ever see you around her again I'll rip you in half."

Étienne didn't need any more convincing—he ran for it, slipping on the ice halfway to the exit.

Chiara turned to me and smiled. "That takes care of him. Now come on, let's skate."

Time passed. Chiara and I mostly stayed in the mountains, with the occasional trip into the city at human size. Akita never seemed to be around, although we did take one day trip to spy on her newly-rebuilt lair.

I don't know exactly when it was that Chiara and I decided we were dating. Chiara certainly had decided it first, and I had no objection. By that point, I'd come to realize that she'd been absolutely right about how my relationship with Étienne had been toxic, so this felt like a solid step in the right direction. And I won't deny that I felt attracted to Chiara—she was beautiful and brilliant and powerful, and I greatly enjoyed the time I spent with her. If that wasn't romance, I didn't know what was.

And one day, after a successful afternoon of ice skating, Chiara seemed more excited than usual. "I think we're ready," she declared.

"Ready for what?"

"Why, to conquer the world together, of course!" Chiara responded, as if there wasn't anything else she could have been speaking of.

I blinked. She'd made no mention of this before.

"I mean, isn't it obvious?" Chiara remarked. "I never had much interest in it before I met you—why conquer the world if you have nobody to share it with? But soon, everything could be ours! It's the most anyone could ever want, and we've got the ability to achieve it."

"What about the humans, though?" I countered.

"What about them?"

"I mean, we can't exactly take everything from them."

"You're clearly still not grasping the extent of your power," Chiara laughed. "Together we could do that easily. I've fought armies before, and the Godslayers even admit they aren't a match for both of us together."

"That's not what I meant!" I protested. "I was trying to say it wouldn't be right to do that."

"How is it not right?" Chiara responded. "Think about it this way—the importance of something is determined by the influence it can have on the world, correct?"

That seemed fair to me.

"And if we fought the humans, we would win," Chiara continued.

"If you're sure," I conceded.

"So therefore, the two of us together can have more influence than all of humanity combined. Since influence equals importance, our desires are more important than all of theirs together."

I thought for a moment. "I feel like that doesn't follow."

Chiara folded her arms. "Go ahead," she teased, "try to find a flaw in my logic."

After a short while, I had to admit that I couldn't.

"Besides," Chiara added, "it won't be so bad for the humans. They always love flocking to leaders. There are already several towns that worship me as a goddess. They throw festivals when I arrive and they sing my praises for protecting them. Are you suggesting they're suffering?"

My instincts kept telling me that something was off about this, but Chiara had told me plenty of times that this was just because of the instincts I'd learned from being socialized as a human. She'd grown past those and she said I eventually would too.

"I suppose you're right," I conceded.

"Then let's get started!"

And hand in hand, we walked towards Lucerne as the sun set behind us, drowning the city in our shadows. Our footsteps uprooted trees, shattered pavement, and cracked building walls as their sound encompassed the landscape.

And as we crossed over the ankle-deep river, I noticed a familiar bridge, rebuilt since the last time Chiara had been here. This time, I was the one to destroy it—and I was completely unprepared for the feeling of sheer power as the wood fell to smithereens across my shin.

And as the two sides of the bridge rocked and slowly collapsed, I looked down. Two people had fallen into the water, and several more were clinging onto parts of the rapidly crumbling bridge. I could barely hear their screams as they stared up at me in fear, unsure whether I would rescue them or kill them.

And I did neither. Chiara had said I needed to move past giving individual humans any second thought. So I kept walking. Chiara, who had stopped walking while I'd been looking down, gave me a smile and squeezed my hand. Apparently I'd done it right.

Chiara stopped walking, standing in the old town. She looked all around her at the city, and lit up her hair and eyes. Following her lead, I channeled energy into my hand and my hair lit up as well.

"Hello, people of Lucerne!" Chiara shouted, and her voice echoed off of the mountains. "I come bearing wonderful news—this city is now our dominion, and you are all now our subjects. So rejoice, for your goddesses have arrived!"

"I hate to break it to you," Akita's voice rang out in response, "but even the loudest voice can't make falsehoods true."

Akita's zeppelin lowered out of the clouds. Wasting not even a moment, Chiara tilted her head back and fired her eye beams for several seconds, only to have them reflect off of the zeppelin's shiny hull into the sky. Holding Chiara's hand for balance, I fired a blast only to meet the same result.

"Well, that's one way to say hello," Akita quipped. A moment later, two gigantic robotic arms extended from the underbelly of the zeppelin and slapped shackles around Chiara's wrists, quickly pulling her arms high up above her.

Chiara seemed absolutely unfazed. Firmly planting her feet on the ground, she yanked down with both arms, pulling the zeppelin down towards her. Once it was within reach, Chiara grabbed both of the chains connected to the shackles, yanked, and easily snapped both in half.

But her victory was short-lived: moments after the falling pieces of the shackles caved in the roof of a nearby building, Chiara found herself wrapped in the same kind of harness that had severed my arm.

"I think you know what this does!" Akita declared. "I know Evanna certainly does. So you're going to want to do exactly what I say, or I'll pick one of your limbs to remove."

Chiara stared at me, and for the first time since I'd met her, I saw fear in her eyes. "Evanna, help!" she cried out.

And I froze.

What could I do? The slightest wrong move and Akita could activate the harness. So I couldn't attack the zeppelin or pull the harness off of Chiara. But how else could I prevent Akita from hurting her?

"Let her go or I'll crush this building," I heard my voice saying as I rested my hand on the roof of the Rathaus.

I hadn't had the slightest idea that I was about to say that. But while Étienne had always told me to never act on instinct, Chiara encouraged it, and it seemed to pay off here.

A moment of silence passed.

"Sorry, Evanna," Akita replied, "but I'm calling your bluff. You're not ruthless enough to do it."

She apparently knew me pretty well. I certainly didn't want to destroy the building below which I'd spent countless summer days reading, the building that I decided to climb one night in a moment of recklessness.

But I knew that if I didn't follow through on my threat, we'd lose.

And so with one hand I broke the tower off the roof of the Rathaus and held it in one hand like a volleyball. "I said let her go!" I shouted, flinging the tower at the zeppelin. There was a deafening crash as the tower exploded against the metal, and a cacophonous rumble as rubble rained down on the buildings below.

I'd just destroyed a large part of the city I loved. So I couldn't let that be in vain.

"I'm going to destroy more and more until Chiara goes free," I declared, drawing back my foot to kick in the rest of the Rathaus. I paused for a moment, in the hope that Akita would realize that I wasn't bluffing. And so I kicked, and pieces of the Rathaus went flying as the walls and foundation caved in and collapsed around my foot.

I knelt down and grabbed one of the humans trying to run away.  Lifting her high into the air, I looked back towards the zeppelin. "You could end this peacefully, right now," I declared. "Once you release her, we'll let you leave, as long as you never bother us again."

And the harness fell. Chiara collapsed to the ground, panting. I knelt back down and set down the human, whose pleas for mercy I'd been tuning out. They scampered off and I stood back up to see Akita's zeppelin lifting off into the sky.

And two bright beams of energy shot up and hit its underbelly, only to be reflected off and come crashing down in the city. Several seconds later, when they stopped, the eastern half of Old Town was a crater. Plenty of people had survived—I saw them coming out of their charred houses, coughing. But numerous buildings were on fire and the ones right by where the blast had hit had completely disintegrated.

Akita's zeppelin vanished into the clouds.

"Chiara, what was that?!" I exclaimed. "I said we'd let them leave peacefully."

Chiara laughed. "There's no need to keep your promises if nobody can make you."

I sighed, looking at the destruction surrounding me. I hadn't wanted to destroy the city, and I was still processing that it had come to this.

"Well, I'm going to keep my promises," I eventually said. "I want people to be able to trust me, to know that I'm going to do my best to make things better."

I knelt down and looked at the few people who hadn't fled, who were cowering in an alley. "You don't need to fear me," I whispered. "I'm here to help the world, not to destroy it."

Not a single one of them looked up at me. I didn't need them to.

Every morning, I would wake up to see Chiara standing, colossal, waiting for me. And I would take a berry and leap off of the ledge with no fear, because I completely trusted that if anything went wrong, Chiara's hand would be waiting to catch me. I also knew that this trust went in reverse—one time, Chiara took a nap in my hand, with my fingers gently curled around her. She knew I would never choose to hurt her.

And every morning, Chiara and I would head out to find a new place to conquer. We'd always stick close to each other, in case of an attack from the Godslayers, but much of the time one of us would go into a town alone, with the other waiting just outside. And word of us had spread quickly: whenever I would walk into a town, people would cheer and bow around my feet. While Chiara would simply walk into the town square and accept the local government's surrender, I'd kneel down and listen to what the people had to say. That's how I learned that a mythology had sprung up around us—the humans saw Chiara and myself respectively as goddesses of the moon and sun. Chiara was delighted to hear about that, and she thought that it was an image we should lean into. After all, she said, there wasn't really any way either of us wasn't a goddess. And she'd been right before when she'd said that humans loved to be led by a higher power.

Of course, not everybody was as receptive to us as our worshippers. I lost count of the missiles I'd swatted aside, the tanks I'd crushed underfoot, the helicopters I'd thrown at platoons of soldiers, the planes I'd blasted out of the sky. After the first several days of being attacked, I started being more creative—stomping my foot to shake the ground and open crevasses, blowing down entire squadrons with a single breath, and occasionally just lying still on the ground for a minute and letting their attacks hit, to show that they couldn't genuinely hurt me. I never could shake off my fear that they would resort to nuclear weapons, but Chiara believed the humans would never launch any since she and I could blast them out of the sky before they landed. I can't say I believed that reassurance, but she wasn't ever proven wrong.

The city of Interlaken was large enough to warrant us both arriving at once. We choreographed it perfectly: Chiara would rise up out of the lake west of the city, and I would simultaneously rise up out of the lake east of the city. We'd then approach the city center and arrive at the same time.

And Akita was waiting there for us.

This time, as the harness wrapped around Chiara's shoulders, I found myself trapped in some kind of forcefield dome. Suddenly terrified that Chiara was in actual danger, I began pounding on the dome with all my strength, and while the sound was deafening, the dome did not yield. I knelt down and fired the strongest blast I could from my hand, a blast that could level the entire town, and it simply burst against the dome like a water balloon.

"Well, hello again, Evanna," Akita's voice rang out. "I'm so glad we got a chance to spend this time together."

To my surprise, Akita was in the dome with me, slowly flapping her wings to stay at the level of my head. As quickly as I could, I shot out my hand and grabbed her, beginning to slowly tighten my grip.

"Let her go or I'll squeeze until you pop," I hissed.

And Akita simply laughed. "And what then? If you kill me, then you've got no more leverage against my associates. Besides, I've cut off communications with the zeppelin: I can't release Chiara or you. I'm just here to talk."

"And what exactly do we have to talk about?" I demanded, not loosening my grip.

"Please don't be deliberately obtuse, Evanna," Akita replied coolly. "I believe I deserve a little more respect than that."

"A bold claim to make to the goddess of the sun," I retorted.

Akita laughed again. "Are you saying you actually think of yourself that way? I knew Chiara was gaslighting you, but I didn't realize you were quite this gullible."

That caught me off guard, and my grip momentarily loosened. It was all Akita needed to squirm out of my hand and fly.

"I can't force you to listen to me," Akita declared, "but you have nothing to lose by doing so, and so I advise you hear me out."

I pondered for a minute. I certainly wasn't in danger of being stuck in this trap forever, as I could dig a passage underneath the edge and then climb through at human size. Unless the dome extended underground to make a full sphere, at least. But regardless, I wouldn't be able to escape quickly enough to rescue Chiara: Akita had masterfully held my focus for long enough for the zeppelin to escape with Chiara captive.

Seeing my resignation, Akita smiled. "Might I have a place to sit?"

Sitting down, I begrudgingly rested my elbow on a building that had been bisected by the forcefield, and I held out my hand at about the level of my face. Akita happily flew to my index finger and took a seat, folding her wings and crossing her legs.

"Please don't mistake my politeness for compassion," I stated. "You currently have my girlfriend captive, and I am going to do whatever it takes to get her back."

Akita snorted. "Your girlfriend?"

"…are you seriously being homophobic right now?" I growled.

"Oh, good heavens, no!" Akita gasped. "I'm a lesbian myself. I'm just perplexed that you're calling someone twice your age your girlfriend."

"Twice my age?" I thought for a moment. Chiara looked like she was about the same age as I was, but she'd looked this exact same age when I'd first seen her from the bridge.

"Giants don't age like humans do," Akita explained. "You're what, thirty? Chiara was thirty when you were born."

"She never told me that," I replied.

"Oh, there's a lot she never told you," Akita declared, crossing her arms. "Did she even tell you about the history of giants in general?"

I shook my head.

"You didn't think you and Chiara were the first, did you? Giants have shown up throughout history, sometimes alone but usually in small groups around the same place and time."

"How exactly do you know all this?" I asked. I very much didn't trust Akita, but I figured I might as well hear her out—after all, I could easily kill her if I ended up needing to.

Akita sighed, kicking her feet up and resting them on my thumb with her legs crossed. "I'm from Neuchâtel. I don't know why, but Chiara's always loved that town—she's visited regularly since before I was born, and so of course the people there think of her as a goddess. She'd often come visit just like how you and she have been doing recently. And one time, about ten years ago, she demanded a sacrifice. She said that if we didn't choose a person for her to take away, she'd flatten the town and pick through the rubble to eat every survivor she could find."

I was completely taken aback by this. "Chiara wouldn't do that," I breathed.

"Of course she would!" Akita exclaimed, with a pained laugh. "You've seen how much value she places in human life. Can you think of even a single way this is out of character for her?"

I couldn't.

"So as the chosen sacrifice, I didn't expect to ever escape from Chiara's clutches," Akita continued. "I figured that I would just be a snack, that she'd make short work of me. But what she actually wanted was a toy."

"A toy?"

"She brought me to her lair and told me to try to escape. I'd run and run through that maze of passages, dodging her hands and her eye beams. She obviously didn't want me to die, because then the fun would end, but death was always at my heels. I'm not quite sure what part of it she enjoyed; I think she mostly just liked the feeling of power, knowing that she had total control of my fate."

Until now, I hadn't understood how Akita would expect me to believe this story considering how little emotion was in her voice. But as I stared closely at her face, I noticed the marks of tears trickling down her cheeks.

"How did you escape?" I asked.

Akita drew a deep breath. "She let me go," she hissed, and the emotionless tone of her voice slipped away. "She wanted to think of herself as merciful. So after a few weeks trapped in her lair, she carried me back to Neuchâtel. I was completely powerless; I couldn't escape on my own."

"And then you founded the Godslayers," I finished.

Akita snorted. "The Godslayers? That's what she calls us? She seriously thinks we think as highly of her as she does of herself? No, my organization's called Beanstalk." Akita took another deep breath. "And now we've got her. Maybe now she'll know at least a little bit of what it felt like to be trapped."

"Take me to her."

Akita cocked her head. "Excuse me?"

"Apologies, that was rude," I corrected. "Would you be willing to take me to her? She listens to me—I might be able to get through to her and make her stop."

Akita leapt off my hand and landed on a rooftop. "I'm certainly not letting you anywhere near her at this size," she declared.

Without hesitation, I fired a blast of energy into my chest, and I was small, standing in the crater that my presence here had left. Akita landed in front of me with her wings outstretched, an angel of vengeance whom I dared not disobey.

"The berries," she ordered. I dutifully handed her the pouch of berries I always kept strapped around my waist. And this was now a situation I could no longer outgrow.

"I'll give you a lift," Akita decided, scooping me up in her arms and leaping into the sky.

It took me a minute to realize that I was trusting Akita with my life. Heights obviously didn't scare me anymore, and so the fact that a fall from here would kill me didn't easily sink in. But Akita held onto me tightly, and after a brief, impossibly fast flight, we were at her base. Through the windows, I could see the immense silhouette of Chiara, chained up as I once had been.

"Well," Akita announced, setting me down and gracefully landing by my side, "here we are."

I hadn't been prepared to see Chiara in chains. Even though I knew she wouldn't break out of the shackles around her wrists and ankles, I'd seen that she was strong enough to do so effortlessly. And if she did so, she'd be able to rip through the entire building in seconds. It was hard to imagine that anything could constrain that level of power.

Trying to stop myself from shaking with fear, even though I knew she would never choose to hurt me, I walked out onto the balcony that extended at the level of her chest. Her face loomed above me, and I got a good look at the silver mask that had been placed over her eyes. Akita had made sure Chiara couldn't fire her eye beams in here—if she did, they'd be reflected right back at her face. Similarly, she'd placed an insulated glove over my hand that would melt my arm with its own heat if I tried to fire a blast.

The warmth of Chiara's breath drifted around me as I thought about what to say. I still didn't know if she knew I was there—she couldn't see me, but I wasn't taking pains to walk quietly. Of course, to her my footfalls would probably be barely audible.

"Chiara?" I tentatively asked.

Chiara's entire body tensed up at once. "Evanna?" she gasped, exhaling a breath that almost blew me off my feet. "How did you get past the Godslayers?"

I bit my lip. "They…let me in," I confessed.

To my amazement, Chiara grinned. "Oh, good job Evanna! I never imagined anyone would be able to trick them like that. You're amazing, you know that? Now come on, let's get out of here."

I drew a deep breath, trying to choose my next words carefully.

"…you are here to bust me out, right?" Chiara asked, tones of worry creeping into her voice.

"I want to," I answered, "but first we need to talk."

Chiara leaned forwards, the chains around her wrists creaking. I instinctively took two steps backwards as her face approached me. "About what?" she demanded, in quiet but forceful tones.

"…Chiara, you've been hurting people. Lots of people, who haven't done anything wrong."

"Well, yeah!" Chiara replied with a curt laugh. "And so have you! That comes with the territory when we're taking over the world."

"I was doing this so we could make the world better," I retorted. "You were doing this for fun."

"And what's wrong with that?!" Chiara exclaimed. "It's not like I just went and killed every human. There'll still be plenty around to do whatever we need them to!"

"You think humans just exist to do things for us?"

"Well, obviously. What else are they good for? They can give us food, they can build things for us, and they're awfully fun to play with. Is there anything I'm missing?"

I sighed. "Chiara, humans live and think just as much as we do. Killing a human is just as wrong as if you killed me."

Chiara drew a deep breath. "You're not Evanna," she whispered.

I flinched. "What do you mean?"

"You're not Evanna!" Chiara shouted, and the force of her voice knocked me off my feet and sent me crashing back into the wall behind me.

I regained my footing, and I saw that Chiara's hair was billowing around her and glowing brightly. Had she forgotten that her eye beams would reflect back onto her? Or was she powerful enough to just blast right through?

"How dare you use Evanna's voice like that!" Chiara shouted, as I heard the distinctive rising hum of her eye beams charging. "Did you think I'd believe that she'd say things like that to me?! You've crossed a line, Godslayers. I'd allowed you to exist until now because fighting you has been fun. But now, play time's over."

With a loud crack, Chiara disappeared. The silver mask stayed in place for a moment, then began the long fall down to the ground. It appeared her eye beams had indeed reflected back, causing her to poof back to human size.

"Wait here," Akita commanded, flying past me and diving over the edge down towards where Chiara must be standing. I ran to the edge and peered over at the scene playing out on the ground.

Akita landed, facing Chiara with a blaster in each hand. "Chiara Corelli, stand down," I heard her shout.

Chiara's eye beams shot out at Akita twice in a row, only to be blocked by Akita's wings, which moved impossibly quickly to defend her.

"You're out of tricks and out of berries," Akita declared. "At this size, you can't beat me."

Even at this distance, I could spot Chiara's distinctive grin.

And suddenly, energy started flashing all around Chiara as her entire body started glowing. One of the flares hit Akita, knocking her backwards. I'd seen this before. Around me, on the train, when I first grew.

And Chiara began to grow—much more slowly than she would grow with the help of berries, but she was growing. Her motions were incredibly fluid—she'd reach her arms out, and keep reaching, her body expanding to match her motions. She was moving almost exactly the way she did on her ice skates, gracefully dancing in place as she grew taller and taller.

Akita tackled me from the front and pulled me out of Chiara's cell. "Everyone take cover!" she yelled, and everybody scattered. Through the one-way mirror, I had a fantastic view of Chiara's growth, and I was struck by how she looked completely calm. I almost forgot that she was an imminent danger.

"How is she doing that without berries?" I asked Akita as we rushed to a bunker built into the side of the mountain.

"Growth can be triggered by strong emotions," Akita explained. "For you on the train, frustration and anger. For her right now, resolve."

"Should I try talking to her again?" I asked.

Akita shook her head as she closed the bunker door. "She'd kill you in an instant before even realizing who you are." She then pressed a button on her radio. "West bunker's secure. East bunker, report!"

A voice came back over the radio. "East bunker's secure, and—"

The voice was cut off by screams, and the sound of static.

Akita's eyes widened in horror. "The bunkers aren't strong enough," she realized. "We need to get out—"

Two beams of energy burst through the door, leaving two enormous holes in the metal. The blsats hit the far wall as people dove away.

And two enormous fingers and a thumb poked through the holes, wrapped around the door, and pulled it off its hinges.

"There you are," Chiara announced with a smile, reaching in her hand. Akita had been right—she hadn't noticed me at all.

Chiara's fingers wrapped around Akita, pulling her out of the bunker and high into the air. And through the door, I could see her other arm swinging down towards the mountain wall above the bunker's roof. With a deafening crash, the ceiling of the bunker began to descend.

I made it out just before I would have been crushed. And I had a full view of the scene—the wreckage of the building, Chiara's hand pressing down on the mountain to flatten anybody remaining in the bunker, Chiara's other hand wrapped around Akita, holding her high in the air.

"How many times do I have to make this clear?" Chiara asked in a remarkably calm voice as she tossed Akita in the air and grabbed her again between two fingers, dangling her over her mouth. "I can do whatever I like to you and you're powerless to stop me."

Akita's wings shot out and slashed at Chiara's fingers. They clearly were extremely effective, because Chiara screamed, dropped Akita, and stumbled backwards. Her arm crashed through the remains of the building directly next to me, and the side of her ribcage immediately followed—if I hadn't instinctively leapt backwards, she'd have hit me and I probably wouldn't have survived.

And I found myself lifted into the air. As I twisted my head around, where I expected Chiara's hand I saw Akita, lifting me away. Soon, we were flying above the mountains, looking down as Chiara slowly pulled herself up out of the ruins.

"I'm so sorry!" I began, but Akita shushed me.

"You did what you could," Akita explained. "And you proved me right—you are a better person than her. And so we're going to try again."

"Again?"

"You've seen what she'll do if we don't stop her."

"But why won't it just end the same way?"

Akita reached down and placed my bag of berries in my hand. "Because this time, she won't be able to deny it's you."

Even through the fog, I could see Chiara's silhouette among the buildings as I walked into Bern. By now, the people recognized me, and I looked around me to see countless eyes peering up through third and fourth floor windows.

As I approached, I spotted a building with a crater in a wall, about the size of my fist. Or Chiara's. I pondered over what the people in that building had done to anger her, or whether she'd just decided to destroy it for fun. There was another damaged building nearby, too—it appeared as if the entire top floor had been ripped off.

This was what I'd been complicit in. It had been so easy to forget that people the size of my finger were still people, with lives that Chiara and I had effortlessly upended without a second thought. But now, I could sense their fear. Heads would turn at the tremors of my footsteps, and crowds would scatter and flee, even though they and I both knew that they'd never be able to escape me if I didn't want them to.

And this was where that would end. No longer would I buy into Chiara's encouragement to flaunt my power. And it was time for her to come to the same understanding.

And all those feelings washed away as she turned towards me and smiled.

"Evanna! You're here!" she exclaimed, leaping up from her position leaning against the Bundeshaus and rushing across the square to give me a hug. "I was so scared about what they might be doing to you. I tried to find you, but I couldn't figure out where they were keeping you! So I came here—I figured once I took control of the national government I could have them find you."

"You did all this for me?" I breathed, completely taken aback that anybody would find me worthy of that much effort.

"Well, of course!" Chiara responded with a grin. "I didn't want to do this without you, but I didn't know of any other way to rescue you. But you're fantastic, as always, and you didn't need to be rescued at all!"

"And now you control the country?"

Chiara shrugged. "I've invited anyone who'd like to deny that to come here and do so. Nobody's taken the offer." An idea flickered across her face, and she grinned widely and grabbed my hand. "Hey, Evanna, come dance with me."

And we danced.

Chiara led, of course. We did every routine we'd learned together on ice, and I finally understood the connection: here, as on ice, she was in perfect control. Every one of her motions was absolutely precise, and she held and supported me to ensure that all of mine were too. A body as vast as hers or mine shouldn't be capable of grace, but Chiara didn't care.

I think what stood out most was the restraint. Even though every motion could send us crashing through a building, we didn't damage a single one. She'd spin me around and dip me with my arms outstretched, and yet only the very tips of my fingers brushed against stone and window panes. She'd step on and over the tram tracks, and yet neither her feet nor mine would be on the tracks when a tram needed to pass.

"Chiara," I began to say, "I need to ask you about—"

Chiara put a finger to her lips. "Ask me later. Remember, we have all the time we'd ever need."

And so my lingering thoughts of what Akita had told me danced away once again.

Perhaps I'd been wrong about flaunting power. Through this routine, where we could clearly destroy the city if we wished to, the people could see both our power and our care. And as Chiara lifted me into the air, with my arms and legs outstretched like a flying superhero, I looked down at the buildings below with pride, comfort, and most importantly happiness.

And Chiara lowered me down to the ground, back to reality. She smiled, and planted a kiss on my cheek.

This was wrong.

"Chiara," I tried again, with all the confidence I could muster, "why did you do what you did to Akita?"

As soon as the words slipped out, my mind filled with hope and fear. This was her chance to prove that Akita was wrong and that I needn't worry. But she had a lot to answer for, and I couldn't trust she would.

"Who's Akita?"

I blinked, bewildered. Had she never even learned Akita's name?

"Akita Catanne," I tried. "The person with the wings, who captured us."

Chiara shrugged. "She had me imprisoned. I escaped. There's no way she wouldn't get hurt in the process."

"That's not what I meant!" I protested. "She said that you'd taken her as a sacrifice from Neuchâtel, and that you'd kept her imprisoned in your lair as a toy, making her try to escape even though she knew she was helpless."

Chiara leaned casually against the Bundeshaus, running her fingers up and down a window. "Huh, I didn't know that was the same person," she mused. "I thought I made it pretty clear back then that she couldn't do anything to hurt me, so why is she still trying?"

The straw dropped, the mask fell. "Because you hurt her!" I exclaimed. "You've been hurting so many people, and you're refusing to admit that's a problem, just like I told you when you were captured!"

Chiara's face froze. "That was you?" she asked, her voice suddenly icy. "That wasn't an imitation of your voice to try to trick me? You actually believe that?"

I nodded, noticing tears welling up in my eyes. "This has to stop, Chiara."

Chiara stood up straight and walked towards me, resting her hands gently on my shoulders as she looked me dead in the eyes. And suddenly her grip tightened, and she lifted me high up into the air above her head. And before I could react, her eye beams hit me in the stomach, and I felt the energy coursing through my body and tearing it apart. And suddenly I was small, and high in the air, falling helplessly as Chiara's immense hand reached out to grab me.

And as her fingers began to close around me, there was a flash of light and I was suddenly pulled sideways at a high speed. I looked up to see Akita, holding me tightly and flying high, high into the sky.

Before we disappeared into the fog, I got one last look at Chiara. Even from up here, I could hear the faint sound of her crying as she pounded her fist down on the Bundeshaus and buried her face in the rubble.

"Are you okay?" Akita asked as my last glimpse of Chiara faded away.

I nodded. "I need to go back in there."

Akita shook her head. "I can't ask that of you. You've done enough to help already. Now that she's lashing out against you too, I'm not going to put you in danger even to stop her."

"I'm volunteering."

Akita looked at me quizzically. "Come again?"

I drew a deep breath. "I want to help her, I want to help you, I want to help humanity. And I think it's safe to say that I'm more equipped to deal with her than you are. You're not asking me to go into danger, but I'm choosing to do so."

"And you'd really be comfortable fighting her?" Akita asked.

I thought for a moment. "More comfortable than I'd be if I did nothing."

Akita nodded solemnly. "I'll bring you back down."

When I approached, Chiara's face was still buried in what had recently been the Bundeshaus. I knelt down next to her and put a hand on her shoulder. "Can we try again?" I asked.

Chiara picked up her head and looked at me. "I'd thought you were better than them," she whispered as small waterfalls flowed from her face, blown into mist by the wind. "That you wouldn't try to control me."

I blinked, startled. "Control you?"

Chiara slowly sat up. "I had a present for you, you know," she sighed. "But I suppose you probably don't want it." Seeing the quizzical look on my face, she smiled faintly. "Well, I might as well give it a shot."

And Chiara stood up, reached into her pocket, and pulled out Étienne.

"Evanna!" Étienne called out, struggling helplessly as Chiara pinched his ribcage between her finger and thumb. "Evanna, please don't let her hurt me!"

Chiara ignored Étienne's plea, holding him forwards towards me. "So, Evanna, what do you want to do to him? You could finish him off quickly, if you want—just drop him, or eat him, or crush him to dust in your hand. Or you could draw it out, and make him suffer in return for all the time he spent making you suffer. What do you think?"

I stared. "Let him go."

Chiara laughed sadly. "I guess I was right. You're letting sentimentality outweigh reason." Without a moment's hesitation, she casually tossed Étienne aside. "If you just didn't want to hurt the worthwhile humans, I could understand that."

I gasped as I saw Étienne land on the ground by Chiara's feet. Somehow, he seemed to still be alive.

Chiara picked up her foot and brought it crashing down on him.

"But he was never worthwhile," Chiara continued. "He did nothing but hurt you, and you had nothing to gain by leaving him alive. You just think that refusing to kill makes you better." Chiara's hair and eyes lit up. "And I don't need anybody who thinks they're better than me."

As Chiara fired her eye beams, I instinctively brought my mechanical arm up to try to block, and it somehow worked—and when Chiara's eye beams stopped, my arm was charged and ready to fire: it had simply taken in the energy from Chiara's attack. And Chiara stared in surprise as I fired a tremendous blast into the sky.

But before I could say anything, she'd started charging for another attack.

"Chiara, please stop," I insisted as forcefully as I could. "That's not going to work on me anymore."

"This one isn't for you," she replied as her eyes glowed brighter and brighter. "This is to give you a wake-up call."

And before I could react, Chiara blasted the city. As I watched in horror, she slowly turned her head and the beams incinerated building after building in an explosion that grew bigger and bigger as she continued her attack.

I knew couldn't stand idly by. Perhaps it wasn't in Chiara's best interests to have encouraged me to act on instinct: I'd tackled her to the ground even before I realized I was doing it. As she careened backwards, her eye beams shot up into the sky, where they couldn't do any damage.

"Now you're speaking my language, Evanna!" Chiara laughed as her eyes faded. "If you want to have power over me, go ahead and try to take it."

Before I could respond, I found myself lifted up and thrown across the square, my back landing in a building that until now had somehow stayed intact. With determination across her face, Chiara walked over to a nearby construction crane, pulled the mast off its base, and pulled the jib off the mast, holding the two beams as if she were wielding two swords. I flung myself to the side as she brought one crashing down right where I'd been moments before.

"Look right there, Evanna," Chiara commanded, pointing with one of the beams. "Do you see that flattened car? You did that, not me. You broke your own rule."

I dodged as she brought the other beam swinging towards me. "I never wanted to hurt anyone!" I insisted, backing down the street as she advanced.

"But that doesn't matter, does it?" Chiara sang, landing a hit and knocking me down on top of the tram tracks. "The only way for you or me to not hurt anyone is to not exist. Am I so wrong for valuing my own existence more than theirs?"

Being hit with the crane beam certainly knocked the wind out of me, and I wasn't going to let that happen again: acting once more on instinct, I reached out and grabbed one end of a tram in my hand, bringing the other end swinging towards Chiara as a flail. The tram tangled around one of the beams of the crane, and with a quick jerk on the tram, I pulled the beam out of her hand, caught it, and snapped it in two.

"I didn't want to hurt them either, at first," Chiara continued, punching me through an entire building and striding through the wreckage towards me. "But what would I get in return? They'd never let me live among them or even live away from them."

"I really think you're oversimplifying this!" I protested as I pulled a tree out of the ground to block as she swung the crane at me.

"Maybe I am," Chiara replied with a sad smile. "But ultimately, does it even matter?"

Chiara sunk her fist into the side of the church tower, which at this point was the only structure standing that was taller than either of us. As it slowly tipped over towards me, I raised my arm to block, and I instinctively cried out as it hit, crumbling around me. I could feel my body ready to burst apart at any moment, but I put all my effort into staying together, and I rose up out of the rubble undefeated. Chiara was waiting for me, her smile finally having slipped off her face.

"If it makes you feel any better, basically any human would do the same in my position," Chiara finished. "Everyone knows that power corrupts.

"Oh, shut up!" I exclaimed.

And for the first time, I saw Chiara genuinely shocked. I was shocked too—I didn't know I had it in me to actively resist. But that was what I needed right now.

"Power doesn't corrupt!" I continued. "That's just something people in power say to avoid accountability! But the fact that you have power doesn't mean it's not your fault if you abuse it."

And that's how I knew I was ready to fight back. Still holding the tree I'd uprooted, I grabbed another tree in my other hand. And with just a small pulse of energy, the tree in my metal hand erupted into flames. Once I used the burning tree to light the other, I had a torch in each hand—I was dual-wielding bonfires, bathing the fog around me in orange light. Swinging an arc of flame in front of me, Chiara was now the one retreating, stumbling backwards over buildings and rubble,.

"I'm impressed, Evanna!" Chiara sang out, fending off my attacks with her crane. "I was worried you'd never fight back." She grabbed a car off the street and threw it into one of the trees, but as it exploded I still barely managed to keep my grip.

"I'm done with not fighting back," I declared. "You were right that I should have resisted when Étienne did whatever he wanted. And now you're acting just like him, so I'm taking your advice."

Chiara growled. "Don't compare me to a worthless human."

"Then don't act like one!" I snapped.

And Chiara paused, and then laughed. "What am I doing?" she sighed. "I know your weaknesses. I might as well exploit them."

"Weaknesses?"

Chiara turned her head, her hair and eyes lighting up. "They're evacuating over that bridge," she announced. "They're probably going to need your help."

Through the fog, I could see the glow of Akita's wings as she directed crowds across a bridge high above the river. And as Chiara's eye beams hit, the supports under one side gave out, and the bridge buckled and swayed.

Chiara turned her gaze to me. "What are you waiting for?" she asked. "They're going to die. Doesn't that matter to you?"

She was right: she did know my weaknesses. Dropping the trees to the ground, I leapt over building after building to get to the bridge, and when it finally cracked and started to fall, I was underneath, my hands holding it up and my feet planted in the river.

"Keep going!" Akita called out to the evacuees. "She's here to help!"

I was. But Chiara wasn't, and as she casually strode forward with a slight smile on her face, I realized I was trapped: I couldn't move my legs or my arms or else the bridge would fall.

"Well, now, what should I do with you?" Chiara mused, walking up right next to me and stroking her hand under my chin. "If I blast you right now, you'll lose your size and the bridge will fall and kill you. So I guess it's time for me to decide if I want you dead."

"You don't," I replied, my voice strained from the effort of holding up the bridge. "You told me yourself: I'm the only one who's like you, and you can't lose that."

Chiara sighed. "You're right. I guess I'll just have to bring you home and do whatever it takes to bring you to your senses." Her hair and eyes lit up and she reached her arms out to grab me.

I shifted the weight of the bridge to just one hand. And with the other, I blasted Chiara in the stomach.

The energy of her charged attack burst outwards as her body vanished, in an explosion that knocked me over. I landed in the river and the bridge fell, at this scale almost seeming to be in slow-motion. I could see Akita flying to rescue person after person by carrying them to the other side, but that wasn't enough. In the last moment before the bridge landed on my torso, I scooped all the remaining people from it into my hands, and I placed them safely on the ground.

And the bridge landed. I probably could've withstood the impact if I hadn't already taken a beating from Chiara's explosion and her prior attacks. But this was too much, and so my body disintegrated. I found myself trapped underwater, pinned down by a gigantic chunk of stone that moments ago I could have held in my hand like a baseball. I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe, and I couldn't fire a blast without it hitting me.

But perhaps I could grow. My bag of berries was out of reach under the rock, but Chiara had been able to grow without one, and on the train I had too. I tried to let my emotions expand within me, thinking about how quickly Chiara had turned on me as soon as I expressed concern about her actions, how I'd failed to get through to her, how I'd most likely killed dozens or hundreds of people.

And it seemed to be working: glimmers of light began to dance around me, distorted by the current of the river, and my muscles began to feel tighter and stronger. As my breath ran out, I prepared to lift as hard as I could.

The rock exploded in a single bright flash.

It had to be Akita. Of course. I should have known she wouldn't leave me to drown.

Two firm hands closed around my arms and pulled, and I was lifted up out of the water. I coughed and panted on the riverbank before looking up at my savior.

"That was a close one, Evanna," Chiara declared with what looked like a genuine smile.

I instantly raised my arm defensively, charging a blast.

Chiara laughed. "Don't worry, Evanna, I've come to my senses."

I gave her a quizzical look. This sudden change of heart didn't make any sense.

And Akita dove out of the sky, pinning Chiara to the ground with a wing at her throat. "This is your final warning," Akita announced. "If you politely come with me now, I promise you will be treated with civility in return. If you don't, I—"

Akita was thrown backwards in a flash. I assumed at first that it was her eye beams, but as I watched, Chiara stood up, surrounded by light.

"Don't worry, Evanna," Chiara sighed, with a smile on her face. "I understand now. You're not to blame. This human has been manipulating you, and so my quarrel is with her, not you."

"Please give it up, Chiara," Akita sighed. "You should know by now that you're not too big to fail."

"You want to see too big to fail?" Chiara laughed, stretching her arms and legs as she prepared to grow. "You want to see the true power of a goddess?"

"Chiara, please stop!" I cried out, running towards her, only to be held back by Akita's hand.

Chiara flashed me a wink and pulled a berry out of her pocket.

"No!" Akita shouted, lunging forwards.

Chiara popped the berry in her mouth and grew.

I knew that taking a berry would do nothing while already at full size, but I'd never thought about taking one while growing naturally. And the two methods did seem to have a combined effect: as Chiara grew, she showed no sign of stopping, ascending up, up, far past her usual size.

"Run," Akita ordered. And I did.

As Chiara fell to a kneeling position, her leg obliterated the area where we'd been standing moments before. She was still growing—even running as quickly as I could, her body was expanding easily as quickly, ready to overtake me. I didn't even know if she knew I was there.

Akita scooped me up and flew, just before I would have been crushed by Chiara's thigh. From up in the air, I had an excellent view of Chiara towering over the city. At this point, each of her legs was a block wide, each of her fingers was larger than a bus, and she could've held my giant form in her hand the same way I would hold a human.

As I wondered whether she'd outgrow the city, the planet, or even the universe, she stopped, picking up her elbow and shifting her legs, obliterating several city blocks until she was casually lounging across Bern's entire downtown.

And Chiara turned her head to look at us, and she smiled—a smile that could devour an entire building like a piece of chocolate. "Let me put it like this," she taunted. "You're nothing. I'm everything. I could devour every last human on this planet, and there's nothing you could do to stop me. Now do you see how insignificant you are?"

I glanced up at Akita in horror. "What do we do?"

And to my shock, Akita smiled. "I've got her exactly where I want her," she replied. "She isn't even considering that we could manipulate her."

"How on earth would we be able to manipulate her?" I asked. "We barely survived even when she was a fraction of this size."

"Think about it, Evanna," Akita explained. "How does Chiara interact with people she actually thinks are insignificant?"

"She doesn't give them a second thought," I answered immediately. "She'll just ignore them and do whatever she wants regardless of how it affects them."

"Exactly!" Akita affirmed. "And so the fact she needed to tell me that I was insignificant to her automatically means that I'm not."

"So how do we use that?"

"We need to lead her away from the city," she explained. "Once there's enough distance, the government can launch nuclear missiles at her. But it'd be hard to do this while holding on to you, so you're going to need wings. I've got a spare set on the zeppelin; I'll take you there."

As we flew towards Akita's zeppelin, Chiara simply watched, slowly turning her head to follow the glow from Akita's wings in the fog. Even though we'd be the size of ants relative to her, she wouldn't be losing track of where we were.

And just as we were about to arrive, Chiara's hand advanced towards us. Akita deftly dodged in between Chiara's fingers, which closed around the zeppelin. Chiara flashed us a wink and tightened her grip, and the hull of the zeppelin slowly began to crumple and crack until it finally buckled and exploded. By then, Akita had taken me to a relatively safe distance.

"Time to get her to stand up," Akita declared, flying further into the fog. Chiara's silhouette faded and disappeared, only to reappear as she walked towards us, seemingly savoring every step. Akita may have been fast, but Chiara was faster.

But we had one advantage Chiara didn't. Akita flew upwards, even higher than Chiara could reach. And Chiara certainly tried, crouching down and leaping, her fingers passing only slightly below our altitude. There a thunderous crash as she landed, even though the ground was too far below for us to make out her feet through the fog.

"Should I grow?" I asked Akita, clinging on to her as tightly as I could.

"Only if you fall," Akita replied. "Otherwise, you're just making yourself a bigger target."

Two gigantic beams of energy cut through the air with an audible hum. Akita gasped. "She's a better engineer than I gave her credit for," she commented. "I thought there was no way her eye beams would work on this scale. We may need to do a bit of dodging."

"I don't think so," I countered. "She'll know she can't hit us through this fog. That's an intimidation display to get us to fly lower."

"Then let's take the bait," Akita decided, diving downwards and forwards. Chiara kept up, taking a few grabs at us that narrowly missed. And suddenly, we weren't flying. For a moment, I thought she'd grabbed us, until I saw that Akita had landed us behind a rocky outcropping. We must have already made it to the mountains.

"Stay quiet," Akita whispered, folding her wings and crouching down.

And Chiara emerged, glancing around slowly, clearly looking for us. The fog was still too thick for us to see her entire body, but she was certainly close enough to see us if she knew where to look.

"She's looking for the light," Akita concluded, still in a whisper. "She's assumed we're still flying and just too far away to spot."

Chiara's hand came crashing into the side of the mountain—not near us, but the impact was almost strong enough to knock us out of our hiding spot.

"What's she doing now?" I asked.

And Chiara closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, and blew. Almost instantly, the fog was washed away, showing us her entire colossal form to reveal she was more than half the height of the mountain. But I didn't have very long to look, as the hurricane force of her breath sent both Akita and myself careening away. Akita grabbed my hand and spread her wings, riding the wind to fly faster than she ever had before.

"There you are!" Chiara sang, her voice echoing across the mountains. "It's good to see you again!"

Instead of pursuing us, Chiara climbed up onto the mountain, grabbing onto the summit and peering around the side to watch it. Now that she'd blown away the fog, she had a clear shot at us, and Akita narrowly dodged as the beams continued past us to level a mountain a good distance away.

And Akita set me down, pointing up into the sky. "It looks like we win."

Following her finger, I spotted the missile descending from the sky.

But Chiara saw it too. And as we watched, she reached out her hand and effortlessly flicked the missile away with one finger. It burst moments later, but Chiara was unharmed.

Akita was speechless. "It appears my plan may have a flaw," she eventually stated.

"Then we need a new plan!" I replied. "Do you know if she has any weak spots?"

Akita paused in contemplation for a moment. "Can you shoot eye beams like she does?" she eventually asked.

I shook my head. "All I've got are my hand blasts."

"And how do those work?" Akita pressed.

"I don't know; Chiara built my arm," I explained. "She said the energy comes from me, but I need the machinery to channel it."

Akita grinned. "So what you're saying is that she has machinery in her eyes that enables her to fire her eye beams," she determined.

I bit my tongue. "She's never mentioned anything about that," I recalled.

"Of course she hasn't!" Akita exclaimed, clutching her hands together. "That would ruin the image of pure power she cares so much about projecting!"

Akita and I reflexively leapt aside as a boulder the size of a house landed right next to us.

"So all we need to do is hit her in the eyes," Akita concluded. "Anything that shoots beams on that scale has got to be something we can explode. The explosion will impact her brain and that should be enough to take her down."

"Can you carry me to where I can get a good shot?" I asked.

Akita grabbed me and flew—and just in time, because Chiara had caught up with us, and her hand came down where we'd been standing, her fingers raking trenches into the rock.

As we ascended, gradually approaching the height of Chiara's head, I charged as strong a blast as I could. Seeing Chiara's face in front of me, filling my entire field of view, letting my fear and despair strike back against the one they came from.

The blast landed. As it faded, I could see that her eyelid had closed, rendering my attack completely useless. A smile spread across her face as she opened her eyes, bathing us in light. And she returned the blast, with an eruption that made my attack look like a tiny spark by comparison.

"How can I make the shot if she closes her eyes?" I asked over the roaring hum of Chiara's eye beams.

Akita dove and set me down on a small plateau that I soon realized was the back of Chiara's hand. "Grab onto her finger and follow my lead!" she shouted, taking off again.

If it hadn't been for the glow of Akita's wings, I'd have lost sight of her as she flew farther and farther away with Chiara's face behind her. But following the glow, I saw Akita landing on Chiara's eyelid, grabbing on with her wings to keep Chiara's eye open.

And Chiara picked up her hand. The sudden motion knocked me off-balance, but my climbing instincts kicked in and I grabbed on. Akita had told me to get to Chiara's finger, so I climbed as quickly as I could. I hadn't earned that gold medal through luck alone—as Chiara's hand approached her face, I reached her fingertip and grabbed on, dangling from one hand and charging a blast.

And Akita's plan clicked in my mind. Chiara was reaching to pull Akita off her eyelid, and in doing so, she was giving me a perfect shot.

I fired my blast, and it hit the exact center of Chiara's pupil. Even as she screamed, I kept up a beam for as long as I could, until she reflexively jerked her hand away. I could now clearly see that Chiara's entire eye was mechanical—and seconds later, it exploded, and Chiara disappeared.

Suddenly, I was impossibly high above the ground with nothing to hold onto. Glancing around to see if Akita was there to catch me, I realized Akita had grabbed onto a now human-sized Chiara—she wouldn't be able to help.

So I swallowed a berry, trying as hard as I could to grow as large as I could before I'd inevitably crash into the ground. And I landed and stretched out a hand for Akita and Chiara to land in.

"Keep her restrained," Akita instructed, setting down Chiara and flying up to land on my shoulder.

I obeyed, closing my fingers around Chiara and gripping her tightly. She was still conscious, but clearly in a daze.

"Are you comfortable finishing her off?" Akita queried into my ear.

And I pondered. She'd undoubtedly killed hundreds or even thousands of people today, and she'd expressed no willingness to change. I could save countless future lives by simply tightening my fist.

And Chiara looked up at me with an expression of utter dessolation across her face. I suppose it made sense: even using the full extent of her power, she'd been defeated. Her dream of having total control over her life had ended up being nothing more than a fantasy.

"Please, Evanna," I heard Chiara whisper, her voice almost lost in the wind..

I shook my head, careful to not knock Akita off my shoulder. "I can't," I replied. "I won't stop you if you decide she has to die, but I hope that won't be necessary."

Akita nodded, and faced Chiara. "I think you've underestimated humanity," she declared. "We can and will stop you if we have to. Hopefully now you'll understand, and we won't ever have to defeat you again. Because if it comes down to that, you won't get any more chances."

Chiara bit her tongue and nodded. I loosened my grip slightly.

"I'll stay in the mountains," Chiara promised. "I'll keep to myself. I know the humans won't ever accept me as one of their own anymore." She turned her eyes to me. "They'll never accept you either, you know."

She wasn't wrong. I recalled the faces of all the people whose lives I'd saved in Bern—the fear in their eyes, even when I was only there to help. In order to be accepted, I'd need to take on a new identity, to never show my true nature, to stay small forever.

And yet, this didn't bother me at all. They weren't ever going to see me as a human, and that was okay. Because I didn't need them to. I couldn't ever simply be a regular person again, but I didn't want to be. I suppose it was ironic: I was the only one of us who accepted power, even though Chiara was always the one to flaunt it. It must have been some kind of self-loathing, then, that made her into a force of destruction—she'd never thought she'd be granted the opportunity to be anything else.

So I held her gently, as I had back when my hand had been a place of comfort and safety for her to rest in. And even now, she nestled in: her role had been reversed, and for a moment, she was content.

Perhaps I'd underestimated humanity. I certainly couldn't pretend I wasn't different, but not everybody was bothered by that. And yes, it was awkward to have to explain to my family that I'd tried to conquer the world, but that didn't stop them from inviting me home to visit. Some of my old friends were scared away, and others began to only care about me for my power, but I was still surrounded by people who cared.

Like Akita.

I was at human size when I asked her to be my girlfriend, but I felt far, far smaller, like a mortal daring to court a god. Even in all the times I towered over her, I'd never seen her as anything less than an equal, her skill and dedication more than compensating for our physical differences.

And yet, she didn't laugh. She didn't dismiss me. Instead, she smiled. I hadn't seen her smile very often, and I was unprepared: when Chiara had smiled, it had been only for her own sake, but Akita was smiling at me.

"I won't deny that I fancy you," she replied. "And so if that's what you want, then that's a yes from me." She gently placed a hand on my shoulder. "But I have to ask—do you think you're ready? You've just come away from two toxic relationships, and so you haven't had much of a chance to see what a good one looks like. Do you know what you're looking for?"

This was new to me. She wasn't telling me what she thought was best for me, like both Étienne and Chiara had. All she was doing was making sure I had everything I needed in order to decide for myself. And this is how I knew I wasn't ready: if this hadn't been something I'd been able to conceptualize, I needed more time.

So we waited. But that didn't keep us apart. Going forward, Akita was right by my side and I was right by hers. She protected me from those who sought me out for my power, and I protected her from those who fought against her efforts to change the world. And we found our place in the world, working in secret to do what humanity's leaders were failing to do for the people.

And I never stopped thinking back to Chiara. Perhaps one day, she'd finally learn the empathy that she'd chosen again and again to reject. But until then, she was simply the giant in the mountains, seen by almost nobody outside rumors and legends. She needed companionship, and I was the only person she'd ever been willing to accept that from. But it wasn't my responsibility to get her to change.

And as I slept, with Akita curled up in my hand, nothing was missing. I didn't control every aspect of my life, but I was controlled by nobody. I was free.