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.