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."