"I heard there's going to be a solar eclipse tomorrow evening," I commented as I pulled the lever to open the elevator doors for the old butler to exit. "I hope the baron knows—it's going to disrupt his reading."
"An…eclipse, eh?" the butler replied, fiddling with his mustache. His name was Hansel, but he never managed to remember mine. "Can't say I know what that is, but I'll let the baron know."
"It's when the moon passes in front of the sun!" I explained cheerfully as Hansel exited the elevator. "It makes the sky go dark."
I'd read about it during one of the many nights I'd snuck into the baron's library. I didn't know exactly what the phenomenon looked like, but I knew the baron of Lockfry wasn't the sort of person to bother turning around to look—which was exactly why I was spreading the lie that one was going to happen the next day.
Hansel didn't turn around as I called out the explanation, but I couldn't blame him. The baron wasn't kind to servants who worked slowly. In fact, he wasn't kind to his servants at all.
That's why I’d decided to kill him.
Hearing the ringing of a call bell two floors up, I closed the doors with one lever and began to raise the elevator with a second. I never got tired of riding alone; I could listen to the relaxing sound of the whirring brass gears.
But the tranquility was interrupted as I opened the doors and Amanthine bustled into the elevator. She was only four and a half feet tall, but she always seemed to fill any space she entered—perhaps because of her untamed cloud of hair, perhaps because of the resonance of her voice.
"Well, hullo there, Ketra!" she began as I closed the door. "Lovely day today, innit? I’d be out havin’ a nice walk if I didn’t have to scrub the kitchen. Chef Aelin’s made a right mess in there again. I swear, I don’t know how she gets anything done. She never puts anything where it goes. How’s she s’posed to ever find things again?”
Amanthine’s monologue had only just begun, and by the time we'd reached the ground floor, I hadn't been able to get a single word in. But I'd already mentioned the "eclipse" to my previous six passengers, so I was still confident the baron would hear the rumor somehow. And that was all that mattered.
Being an elevator operator meant I got to know everyone in the mansion—except the baron and his family. They'd never degrade themselves by riding the service elevator. They had their own, and servants were of course never allowed to use it. But the other servants would talk to me, and through them I knew the baron well. He had an ego and a temper, and wouldn't hesitate to strike anyone who displeased him. And he seemed completely at peace with the fact that half the servants were eating spoiled food and sleeping on benches and shelves in the cellar. Myself included—I’d had to string up an old burlap sack in front of my high shelf to keep out the cold air, since the baron had never bothered to fix the cellar’s steam pipe. I wasn’t here by choice, of course—the baron had us all under strict contract, and we knew that he’d take anyone who broke the contract to court for everything they had. He’d made an example of Tomas and his family a few years back.
Clearly, the baron was an utterly despicable man. And that’s was why I'd chosen him as the target to test my newfound power. His bedroom and dining room were against the courtyard, which I had no hope of getting to without being noticed by the guards, who'd evacuate him to where I couldn't reach. But he'd spend every Thursday evening reading in the library by the light of the sunset. That's when I'd strike.
I slept restlessly that night—if not for the sack I’d strung up, I would have undoubtedly fallen off my shelf. I was usually a calm sleeper, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how I was going to kill a man the next day, and subsequently I’d be a murderer for the rest of my life. Was that really something I was comfortable having on my conscience? Could I handle how it would feel to take a life?
All through the following morning and afternoon, I carried a bag. In it, I had a mask and a cloak, which I’d use to hide my identity. And at four o'clock precisely, I left the elevator and ran out into the fields beside the mansion, where they'd installed the electrical cable running from the town. I wasn't sure exactly what it was for, since the steam boiler powered all of our technology just fine, but I couldn't complain. That cable was how I'd discovered my remarkable power.
I pulled on my cloak and mask, bracing myself. This process hurt, and I wasn't eager to go through it. But I was certainly eager for the results.
Closing my eyes so I couldn't reflexively stop myself, I shot my hand out and grabbed the cable, holding on as tightly as I could. I gritted my teeth shut so I wouldn't scream—I didn’t know for certain that I was out of earshot.
My grip was solid; I wouldn't let go—and so I opened my eyes. The cable, white-hot, was burning into my palm and fingers as curling tendrils of electricity slithered up my arm, darkening my skin in chaotic zigzags. It'd take several days to heal—I'd need to be careful to always wear gloves and long sleeves, or else my identity would be exposed.
The electricity reached my heart, which began to pound harder and faster, each beat a sharp shock reverberating through my skeleton. And as it pounded its torturous drumroll, I let go of the cable, letting out an involuntary sigh as I collapsed and the last sparks faded around me. The electricity had done its job; my heart would take it from here.
Each push of my heart sent more blood into my arteries—and more, and more. There was more blood entering my arteries than there was leaving my veins. I could feel them stretching, to try to contain it all.
And my muscles began to stretch, too. They were expanding, pulling my skin tight, shifting my bones. Which in turn began to expand. I could feel them cracking as my body convulsed: my skeleton was reshaping itself as I grew. Fortunately, this particular pain was brief: this was simply the result of the different parts of my body starting to grow at different times. Once I’d grown a foot or so, everything had just about equalized, and the pain subsided.
I’d known to expect this, but it was still certainly scary to go through—although certainly not as scary as it had been the first time I’d grown. When lightning had struck me in the forest. I hadn’t been ready for the pain, for the contortions, for the expansion—and ever since, every thunderclap I heard would momentarily yank me back to that overwhelming shock and terror.
But now, I was growing, and I was in control. My muscles were still stretching, my bones were still crackling like burning logs, but I could move. Every part of me was where it needed to be. And the increasing amount of blood flowing out of my heart was making me stronger: there was power within me, and today I would finally get to use it.
I actually still didn’t know why my clothes grew with me. Or, well…I didn’t know why electricity made me grow in the first place, but the fact that my clothes grew too made even less sense. Perhaps in the future it would help me figure out why I had this power in the first place—but for now, I had more pressing things to focus on. The sun was dipping below the horizon; the baron would be in his library. I needed to seize my chance.
I approached slowly, careful not to cause any tremors with my footsteps—which wasn’t too hard, because the ground was soft, the soil giving in around my feet to leave deep prints. I estimated two or three people could fit in one of them—at my full size, I was twice as tall as the mansion itself.
And soon, the library window found itself in my shadow. The baron’s reading light had just decreased substantially. But he wouldn’t be turning around: by now, he would have heard the rumors of an eclipse. So as far as he knew, the sudden darkness was just an astronomical phenomenon, and he’d never cared for astronomy. And sure enough, as I crouched down in front of the huge window, I saw him still reading, even in the low light.
With one fluid motion, I slammed my hand through the window, shattering every pane at once, and grabbed the baron straight out of his chair, pulling him out towards me. I wasn’t as careful as I liked: as my fist closed around his torso, I could feel his ribs cracking from the pressure. But I supposed that didn’t matter: he’d be dead soon either way, so the amount he suffered now wouldn’t make any lasting difference.
As I yanked the baron out through the broken window, he let out a high-pitched wail that fell like a slide whistle—the ridiculousness of the sound almost had me laughing. I’d later realize that the speed at which I pulled him towards me had made his cry sound higher than it actually was, and the fall in pitch was when I was holding him still. But either way, it was certainly loud, and moments later two guards burst through the library door. I watched as the color drained from their faces—who would have been prepared to see a masked giant filling the entire view out the window, after all? But as they raised their crossbows, I figured it was time to flee. I didn’t know how much a crossbow bolt could hurt me at this size, but that was something I could find out later. After the baron was dead.
And so I ran, my cloak billowing behind me. I didn’t need stealth now: I had my target, and so I let my feet fall hard, quaking the earth. As I entered the forest, my legs knocked down trees, as the baron in my hand continued to scream. I was obviously faster than the guards, but I didn’t want to have to rush things, and so I kept running until I reached the river at the center of the forest. Once I was there, I sat down on one bank and let my feet rest on the other, letting my legs form a bridge.
“What do you want with me?” the baron shouted, pounding his fists against my fingers. “Let me go!”
He seemed to think he could make me release him. And he was right. I opened my hand, letting him fall fifteen feet to land on the grass below. A squeak of pain escaped his lungs—that must have hurt considering his already-broken ribs.
“Who are you?!” the baron wailed, staring up in horror as he tried to drag himself away, without daring to take his eyes off of me.
I didn’t need to get up to follow him—he was still well within arm’s reach. And so I let him crawl for several seconds, before reaching out and pinning him to the ground with one finger.
I hadn’t expected to be comfortable causing pain. I certainly hadn’t expected to enjoy it. But as I pressed my finger into his broken ribs, it felt right. He deserved this. All those years on my shelf in the cold cellar, all those years eating spoiled food…I could finally pay him back for how he’d made me suffer. For how he’d made us all suffer.
I lifted up the baron in my hand, holding him gently—I didn’t want to accidentally kill him before we were done. And with my other hand, I pinched his arm between my fingers, gradually beginning to pull.
“No!” the baron choked out, his eyes widening in horror. “No, please—“
I could feel the ligaments separating, the muscles tearing. And with just a tiny bit more force, his arm detached from his body. I tossed it into the river, observing the flow of the splash of red in the otherwise clear water. It was beautiful, in a way.
The baron seemed to be in shock. His breathing was increasing steadily, and he was becoming slippery with sweat. Fortunately, his relatively round body proved fairly easy to hold onto.
“W—why?” the baron asked, his voice almost gone. “Why are you doing this?”
I responded by tearing off his leg with one quick jerk. He didn’t need to know the reason. It wouldn’t matter to him once he was dead.
The baron’s mouth froze—he wasn’t able to speak anymore. But I could still feel his pounding heart. It was still trying its best to keep him alive, even though he knew at this point that it wasn’t up to the task. Not every heart was as powerful as mine.
It was time to finish the job. I tore off his remaining leg and his remaining arm, before slowly squeezing his head between my fingers—until his skull collapsed like a broken ornament. His body was useless to me now, and so I threw it in the river with the rest of his limbs.
I had to respect that he didn’t try to offer me money to leave him alive. I’d expected him to—but I supposed he must have had at least a little bit more pride than that.
As I watched the last traces of red swirling away downstream, I felt almost disappointed. It had been over so quickly, despite how I’d dragged it out. How could years of suffering culminate in less than a minute of catharsis? I wasn’t done.
And to think I’d wondered if I had it in me to kill.
I turned, setting my sights on the mansion and slowly walking back towards it. The guards would certainly put up a fight, but…well, the baron’s skeleton had snapped so easily. If people were really that fragile, I had nothing to fear.
Two guards were entering the forest as I left, and as they looked up at me I felt the sharp stings of crossbow bolts entering my skin. One embedded itself in my mask, just below my forehead—they must have been aiming for my eye. I could hear it quivering, not quite managing to pierce through the enlarged leather.
Wasting no time, I raised my foot and brought it crashing down on the closer guard. It was hard to tell from up here, but I was pretty sure that had been Ethias—she’d worked for the baron even longer than I had. But her experience didn’t translate into resilience: her body posed almost no resistance to the weight of my boot, and with a single crunch her skeleton was ground to powder, blood splattering out in every direction.
Seeing this, the other guard turned and ran before I had a chance to recognize his face—but his shoulder-length brown hair meant that he was either Colburn or Haivel. Either way, he certainly couldn’t outrun me, and he seemed to know as much, zigzagging through the undergrowth in the hope I’d lose track of him. And I did: the upper leaves of the trees blocked my line of sight. I only lost him for a moment—but in the time it took me to grab the tree by its trunk and yank it out of the ground, he’d disappeared from view.
Raising my foot once again, I brought it crashing down as hard as I could, aiming for a rocky part of the ground. And I got exactly the scale of impact I was looking for. A piercing crack rang out across the forest. Leaves and branches fell from the trees all around me, trunks split in two, and dirt and broken rocks cascaded down the hillside. And I got exactly what I was looking for: a yelp of alarm from behind a boulder, giving away the guard’s hiding spot. With one swift motion, I flipped over the tree in my hand and brought its trunk crashing down like a club, cleaving the boulder in half and turning the person behind it into pulp.
It must have been Haivel—Colburn was older; he wouldn’t have been able to run like that. That was a shame; I’d liked Haivel. He’d given me a jar of apricot preserves once; I’d managed to get it to last for weeks. The memory of apricot crossed my tongue as I heard Haivel’s crossbow crash to the ground a good distance away.
I hadn’t needed to kill him—he’d been fleeing; he hadn’t posed a threat. I’d gotten carried away, and the thrill of killing the baron had gone to my head. I’d wanted to kill again, and I’d let that lead me to hurt someone innocent.
And that’s when it hit me. I loved to kill, and with this power I was unfathomably good at it. And now that I wasn’t bound to the baron anymore, I could make killing my career.
I wouldn’t join an army or fight for a cause, of course. I hadn’t earned my freedom from the baron just to conscript into the service of someone else. No—I’d become an assassin, a killer on my own terms. I’d let people come to me, quaking in their boots, with a target’s name and a bag of gold. Everyone always wanted somebody dead, after all. I could accept whatever clients I wanted, and I’d never run out of opportunities to use my power. And as long as I wore my mask, I’d be able to live whatever life I wanted—my vast crimes could only come back to haunt me when I was vast enough to match them.
But I’d need to build a reputation. And that could start right back at the mansion.
As I returned, I felt a crossbow bolt entering my knee, and a sharper pain in my shoulder—that must have been an arrow. My muscles tensed up; my instincts were to fight back. I’d always had to fight back. But now…now I didn’t. I simply knelt down and waited, ignoring the stings of pain as a few more shots entered my skin. They had no chance against me, and I knew they’d realize that. And sure enough, after a few seconds, the stings stopped.
“What do you want?” a panicked voice called out from behind the mansion doors.
“Don’t worry,” I called back. “My only target was the baron, and I’m finished with him.”
My voice was much more resonant at this size—I hadn’t had a chance to hear it before. It was coming from so deep within me that at first it was like I was hearing an echo in a colossal amphitheater.
It took a few minutes for everyone to file out of the mansion. Or, well…almost everyone. The baron’s family was nowhere to be seen—they’d undoubtedly retreated into the safest parts of the mansion. But all the other servants—everyone I knew—were soon assembled before me, staring up at the giant in awe.
“Who…are you, ma’am?” Colburn asked, taking a tentative step towards me.
I couldn’t give my name, of course. I needed to stay masked. But I did have an answer.
“Call me Eclipse,” I replied with a smile. “You probably heard I was going to come by.”
“Well, um,” Colburn replied, his voice and body shaking, “I did hear there'd be an eclipse, but we all thought that meant…um, never mind. What…um, what did you do with the baron, miss Eclipse?”
“I liberated you from him,” I answered with a smile, shifting from a kneeling position to lie on my side. I couldn’t be at direct eye level with people barely larger than my fingers, but I could make this slightly easier.
“Are you some kind of god, ma’am?” Hansel asked, nervously chewing his mustache.
“I’m no god, sir,” I replied. “Just an assassin, working for whoever’s willing to pay.”
“So who hired you, then?” Chef Aelin asked, raising her hand.
“Aelin, no!” Colburn exclaimed, shoving the chef aside. “You can’t ask her that!”
I let out a quiet rumble of a laugh—even when faced with the terrifying might of my power, their antics were the same as ever. Relief washed over the crowd as they heard me laughing, and my voice was joined by several smaller ones.
“Are you Ketra?”
The three words shattered the tranquility like a thunderbolt through my heart.
My head spun around instantly, each of my hairs cracking like a whip in midair. My gaze fell on Amanthine, who’d asked the question so casually, as if it was just a passing thought.
“You look an awful lot like Ketra,” she commented, adjusting her apron. “And she ain’t here, yeah?”
“Wait, who’s Ketra?” I heard a voice asking.
“The elevator operator, yeah?” another voice responded.
My hearing was blurred—every voice was faint and dizzying, and even my vision felt as if it had faded to grayscale. My mask hadn’t been sufficient. They knew—they all knew. And now there was only one thing I could do.
“You never could keep your mouth shut, could you, Amanthine?” I sighed, clenching my fist tightly in frustration and despair. “If there was just one time in your life you could have not said what was on your mind…that would have been it. But you just had to run your mouth, just like always. And now look where it’s gotten us.”
Amanthine’s face paled. “I’m sorry, Ketra, I—I didn’t know you wanted to…”
Hansel stepped forward, putting a hand on Amanthine’s shoulder. “No need to worry, ma’am. I’m sure not one of us here can fault you for what you did to the baron. We’ll be happy to swear ourselves to secrecy—isn’t that right?”
Hansel was met by a chorus of fervent affirmations from the crowd.
With a long sigh, I slowly shook my head. “That’s not a risk I can take. If it were just one loose end, then perhaps, but…it’s just too many.”
“But then…” Hansel seemed confused, cocking his head as he looked up at me. “Then what other option is there?”
There was only one option—and I couldn’t bring myself to put it into words. But as I gazed out at the crowd and saw many wide-eyed white faces, I realized it was clear from my expression.
“No, um, you can’t—“ Colburn stammered. “Please, miss Eclipse, please don’t—“
“Colburn, this is going to be hard enough already,” I quietly lamented, avoiding eye contact. “I do care about you. I care about all of you. I…don’t want to do this.”
“Then don’t!” Colburn exclaimed. “You don’t have to—“
My arm slammed outwards into the crowd, sending several people flying as my fingers closed around Colburn’s ribcage and squeezed. It was like crushing an egg—remarkably little resistance, but quite messy. I could hear screams as blood splattered out in every direction, and I could see that only one of the people my arm had sent flying was moving. Perhaps the others had hit their heads.
“Scatter!” I heard a voice shouting, and the crowd did just that. With so many people moving, I couldn’t tell who was who. And that was for the better. It would always be easier to kill if I didn’t know who I was killing.
The crowd seemed to be separating into three parts. One group was headed for the mansion’s doors, seemingly hoping to find safety within the walls, while another group was headed for the forest, and one lone figure was running down the road towards the village.
The first group I’d need to focus on would be those heading for the forest—like I’d seen with Haivel, it was all too easy to lose people in the trees. I counted them as they ran: one, two, three, four…seven. Once I’d taken seven lives, I could return to deal with the mansion.
As I sprang up and ran towards the forest, I managed to flatten one person underfoot, just like I’d done to Ethias. It was unsettling that the feeling of crushing someone underneath my boot was now familiar—when I brought my foot down, I knew exactly what to expect. The crunching of bones, the spattering of blood…how was I so quickly becoming numb to this?
The six remaining targets were spread out, almost reaching the forest. But with a jump and a twist, I landed in front of them, falling on my side to use my body as a massive wall in between them and the sanctuary of the trees. One of them tried to dart around my foot, only to be kicked so hard that their body splattered against the mansion wall. The remaining five found my arm encircling them, just barely too thick for them to be able to jump over—and constricting more and more.
“Ketra, please stop!” one voice cried out. I deliberately avoided trying to identify the voice—and instead, I squeezed my arm against my chest. The five ensuing dark splotches of red were barely noticeable on the black fabric of my cloak.
With seven lives successfully checked off my list, I returned to the mansion. The only way to ensure I’d take out everyone there was to level the whole building, so I might as well get started. Moving along the outer walls, I languidly dragged my fingers just under the outer rim of the roof, letting the uppermost rooms cave in on themselves behind me as I circled around the structure.
Once I reached where I’d started, with none of the top floor left for me to collapse, I spotted a single figure in the courtyard, turning to run. I couldn’t quite reach them over what was left of the mansion, but I could reach a tree. I grabbed one limb, snapped off all the smaller branches, and quickly sharpened it to a point with my nails, before hurling it like a javelin to impale them, stabbing through their torso to plant the point deep into the ground.
A firm kick with the bottom of my foot shattered through the near part of the remaining three floors of the mansion, leaving corridors exposed on both sides. Squatting down, I reached my arm as deep into the second floor as I could, dragging it back and forth to collapse everything I could. I felt a small warm body fall into my hand. Remembering how I was able to sharpen the tree’s limb with my nails alone, I pinned them to my palm with my middle finger and put the tip of my index finger to their neck, dragging it sideways to slit their throat.
Removing my arm from the crumbling wing of the mansion, I surveyed what was left. I was overthinking this—the remnants of the mansion were barely any bigger than I was. And my mass was just as deadly a weapon as my volume.
I dropped to my knees on top of one end of the mansion, and all three floors instantly collapsed under my weight. I continued to lie down, crushing the building like a shirt being ironed. And my chest came down on the final intact rooms, leaving the mansion a lifeless ruin. Silence fell, as did a few remaining drops of blood from my fingernail.
Only one target was left, and they’d gone to the village. After letting myself draw a deep breath, I stood up and ran after them. Even though it wasn’t even a sprint, my hair blew out behind me as if its gravity pulled it backwards instead of down. The walk to the village used to take twenty minutes—but I was able to make the trip in less than one.
Many sets of bulging eyes were trained on me from both sides of the street as I walked confidently through the town. One grocer let a watermelon fall from their hands to shatter on the ground as they stared up from their stands. The setting sun cast their shop's shadow on my legs as I loomed over it—and on my torso as I knelt down to speak to them.
"The one who ran into town from up the road," I began, keeping my voice low. "Where did they go?"
Their mouth gaping, the grocer pointed a shaking hand at the stone chapel just down the road.
Some might have viewed it as a place of sanctuary, but not me. I approached the chapel, squatting low, peering through the windows to try to spot my target. There she was—Aelin, staring out the stained-glass windows in horror as she spotted me from the altar. The windows were tall, but too narrow to fit my hand through, and so I slammed the side of the church with my shoulder, letting the stone bricks collapse inwards. And a moment later, Aelin was trapped in my hand. I raised her up to my face with a solemn look.
"Eclipse, wait!" Aelin exclaimed. "Wait, killing me won't help you!"
I wanted to be able to believe that. I didn't want to kill her. I wanted to be able to leave at least one person I'd known alive.
"I told them!" she explained frantically. "I spread the word! And I told them to spread it too. Your secret's out; you can't keep it hidden. So you shouldn't bother to try!"
My heart sank—but not for the reason she expected it to. I could keep my identity hidden. But was I truly ready to do what that would take?
Yes. I was. This was what I had to do, to commit to my new life as an assassin.
Aelin's face paled as she saw my expression. "You can't—" she stammered. "There's no way you can—a hundred people live here…"
She was right, in a way. There was no way I'd be able to hunt down and kill a hundred people individually. Inevitably, some of them would get away.
But there was one other thing I could do. My last resort.
Electricity began to crackle along my arm. Aelin let out a scream as it jolted through her, making her hair stand on end. And a second later, she was dead. The last person I knew by name.
And as I let her body fall to the ground, I felt an electrical charge rising within me. All the power I'd absorbed when I grew—all the pain, all the determination…it was surging uncontrollably upwards, outwards, no longer mine to bear.
A tremendous bolt of lightning erupted from my mouth with an ear-splitting crack, tearing apart what was left of the church, before the electricity spread in massive arcs across the rest of the town, lighting trees on fire, charring bodies, sparing nothing. It only took a few seconds—and as the last bit of power left me, I collapsed to the ground, slowly dwindling back to the size of a human, to lie in the ruins of the town. The only survivor.
Even the sound of my own thunder was terrifying. I lay there, shivering in fear, for several seconds. I was the one that had caused all the destruction surrounding me, and yet at that moment I felt more powerless than ever. I hadn't wanted to do that. I'd wanted to kill the baron, but not any of the others. I'd made choices I didn't want to make.
But I'd committed. Now, there was nothing in my way, and I could become the assassin I wanted to be.
Except as I stood up, I realized I was wrong. I hadn't committed at all. If I truly had been ready to commit, I wouldn't have cared who knew my name. I'd needed to keep it secret, because I wasn't ready. That's why as an assassin I could be only Eclipse. Never Ketra. So Ketra would never lose the chance to leave it all behind.
Was that insecurity worth taking so many lives?
Of course it wasn't. I'd been stupid, I'd been cruel, I'd let my bloodlust control me.
But I couldn't undo it. The sun was down, the deed was done. Eclipse had arrived.
Giantess World
