“You what?”

    “That’s what it felt like.”

    Matthew was confused. “You should have fallen ten stories. How did you even survive?”

    “Because it wasn’t that much of a fall for me.”

    Matthew grew even more confused. “I’m not following.”

    Maia smiled, understanding Matthew’s confusion. She rose up, taking just a step closer to the firepit, still watching the swirling flames within. “Reducing a person’s size is one thing. They do not retain the fragility of a normal human body. They become a little more durable, bendable, can resist more physical trauma than at their normal size. But if it’s you who changes size instead… “

    Maia’s smile grew broader. It was the smile he had come to know with at the start of this journey. Not a smile of the meekly girl she has been telling about in her story, but that of the god-like being that he'd forgotten he was in the presence of. It took a moment for him to grasp the meaning of her words, and a cold shiver ran down his spine when he did.

    “You… grew. Didn’t you?” He said.

    She looked at him, still sitting on the floor. He was her size, but for some reason felt even smaller than when he was at her feet.

    “It’s called size-shifting.” She said. “It works both ways.”

    “But… “ Countless scenarios ran through his mind about the consequences of such an ability. “How is it even possible?”

    She chuckled. “Are you really surprised, after all you’ve seen so far?”

    He knew he shouldn’t, but it still felt like he’d just discovered that the world was round. He could vividly imagine her having her way with an entire city now, and for some reason it felt even more awe and fear-inspiring at the same time. If she could grow, she could- That’s when it all clicked for him.

    “Ah, now I get it.” He said. “That is the reason why you are trapped on a space station, isn’t it? You can’t grow your way out of it.”

    Her smile faded a little, then she looked back at the fire. “I miss it.” She said. “I haven’t felt it for such a long time now.” She brought her arms up, looking at her palms as she clenched and unclenched her fists. Then she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “It is very different from being normal-sized.”

    “Well, ” he said, “it shouldn’t be possible in the first place. But how so?”

    “It’s difficult to describe.” She said. “It feels like you’re being crushed from all sides, both inwardly and outwardly. At first, every nerve in your body is telling you that huge amounts of pressure is coming from all sides, like an invisible force pinning you to the ground. It feels very close to being on the surface of a planet whose gravity is several times bigger than normal.”

    “Because, “ Matthew added, “your body shouldn’t be able to withstand the weight! How could it? And how tall did you become anyway?”

    “About three hundred feet.” She said. “I don’t know how or why, and I stopped caring a long time ago about that.”

    “Three hundred feet…” he trailed, trying to render an imagine in his head. It wasn’t too difficult for obvious reasons.

    “But the best part is when you try to move.” She continued, looking back at Matthew, eyes awfully similar to the first time he’d seen them. “Your body is telling you that you shouldn’t be able to move even an inch, yet you can. It tells you that you shouldn’t be able to breath, but you do like always. Your arms should be ripped from their sockets, your spine should break, your legs should shatter. But they don’t.”

    Her enthusiasm was astounding. She really was a completely different person from the one she told him about in her story. And it irked him that he wasn’t sure which was the real one.

    “And when do you move,” she continued, “the power that drives your body is so incredible, it… “ she trailed, and drew in another breath.

    “I think I should should start at the beginning.”

    ---

    Maia opened her eyes, looking at a sky full of stars.

    She was alive. How?

    She was sprawled on the ground, feeling like she was buried underneath a shallow layer of sand on a beach. Instinct made her move her arms, easily breaking through the sand. She brought them in front of her face, their forms slightly lit by the moonlight. It felt like moving them under water, they felt heavy. Her whole body did. Strange sounds came from all directions, a confusing mass of indiscernible signals that felt somehow familiar but very unnatural at the same time.

    She rose up, her mind still trying to make sense of all the different, alien sensations that shot from all of her senses, but the one she focused on was that sensation of sand sliding off her chest and torso, tracing the shape of her breasts and making her aware of her nudity. She was naked, out in the open.

    She covered them with her arms and looked around. Another eire feeling, this time from her sight.

    The first thing her mind associated her surroundings was with a carpet of candlelights. She sat on a dark area encircled by dots of light that spread all around her for hundreds of yards. It reminded her of childhood memories, people mourning war heroes on the grand plaza.

    But the lights weren’t flickering, their sources were not flames. Though the dots did not illuminate their surroundings much, it was the shadows cast by things around them that were difficult for Maia’s mind to place. She needed a few moments, but with each passing one, the pattern became clearer.

    Rows of street lamps barely making the cobbled streets beneath them visible, lights behind rows and columns of windows indicating all too familiar buildings, sets of white or red ones that made them out to come from cars. Everything was too small, like a vast toyland of unimaginable detail that was just too absurd to believe it to be true.

    Then a shadow on the streets moved, and Maia flinched in instinct. She had to put a hand behind her to keep herself from falling over, placing it on a box-shaped thing that gave away to her weight in an instant, crushing what must have been one of those buildings with too much ease, like it was made of the sand.

    Maia looked at it and billowing shadows cast by the dust coming from it. She had to squint, barely able to make out the area in the dark, but she could see the vast patch destroyed by her prone form, and the burrowing paths where her arms and legs had ripped through those buildings.

    But her mind told her to look back at what that moving shadow was, and she did. Knowing what to look for, she could see the little shadows cast by the lamps on the streets. She knew what they had to be, but moving ones?

    She moved closer, on all fours since her movements still felt much too weird. She tried to be careful, placing a hand on a street, feeling the weight of it make a dent on the cobbles. Tucking her hair back with her other hand, she lowered her head to take a closer look. The shadows moved.

    Maia flinched again, but much less so this time. She followed the shadows as they backed away until one of them moved right beneath one of the lamps, and Maia’s mouth gaped.

    The soldier was much too real. He stopped right there with a rifle on his hand pointing at the ground, taking a look back at Maia. She could just about make his squinting eyes out, he must have been barely able to see her.

    It cannot be!

    She felt a desperate urge to feel his tangibleness, he simply couldn't be this real! She moved her hand, pointing with her index finger and slowly reached forward. She needed to touch him, to poke him; it felt like the natural thing to do. He didn’t react at first, but as the finger became visible by the lamps, he took a step back, eyes widening. The he held his rifle up, and shot at it.

    It was like a spider had suddenly flinched to take a bite at her finger, and Maia did what her instinct told her to do: to jump he back as fast and far as she could.

    The next moment, she found herself flying through the air, adrenaline shooting through her veins before she crashed down on the ground. It wasn’t a simple fall-over, she ground along the surface, plowing through rows of buildings and rendering each one to rubble and dust.

    All lights then flickered, the area immediately around her growing entirely dark. She could even hear the thundering sounds all around her, and could feel the dust-filled wind tracing along her skin. But the image of the soldier was the one thing etched most on her mind at that moment.

    She stood up on her legs, barely able to balance herself. She drew in deep breaths, and tried to recall the last thing she remembered before she woke up.

    Kaia!

    Tears welled up. Then she remembered the golden haired woman, Aria, and what she had told her before she threw her through the window, something about a power deep inside of her. But what the hell was this?

    Think! Maia!

    She looked around again, beyond the ruined patch around her. She took another look at the shadows, cast by the still working street lamps and the dim moonlight; she looked at the shapes they formed. Little by little, she recognized the city, her city, and her home, Karai. And she stood far taller than any building in it.

    She shook her head. “Think, Maia!”

    Even her voice felt different. It felt like she could sense its ripples travel through her body, and the faint echoes streaming all around her. Then, more lights flickered.

    She looked up. They weren’t really flickering, but bursting instead, like… it was gunfire. A moment later, she felt small stings all over her skin.

    She stood still in the dark, the stings much too harmless for her. It wasn’t real. It didn’t make sense, and it didn’t even feel real. Maybe it was some twisted form of afterlife, something designed to confuse the hell out of a spirit, like a test.

    She stopped her mind from wandering into the ridiculous. But her situation was ridiculous, in every imaginable way in fact. She didn’t know what she needed to do, so she followed instinct. And it still told her to confirm the realness of all this.

    She observed the bursting gunfire, spotted a particular group of denser ones, and took a step towards them.

    She took the step like she would normally do, but it was too much in her current predicament. It crashed through another building, sending its bricks flying through the air before her foot settled behind it, but not before Maia had lost her balance and fell over, again.

    She managed to cushion her fall with her hands this time, but the buildings were still far too weak. Her hands plowed through them and then her breasts followed, wrecking what was left as she fell on her front with a heavy thud.

    Rising up, she felt a wet sensation on her right forearm, and felt it with her right hand. It was wet, soft, and warm.

    “Heavens!” She said with a weak voice, her whole body shuddering at what it meant. “What is this!”

    The gunfire intensified.

    She took another few deep breaths, calming herself, then walked, carefully this time. She managed to stay on her feet, striding towards the denser group of gunfire coming her way. She had to look at where she was stepping in order to keep her balance, and became aware of the enormous power of her steps.

    Entering areas that were somewhat illuminated, she could see her steps literally shaking the ground, shattering windows and causing countless cracks on structures. Their heaviness felt very real, but her mind still wouldn’t believe what she was seeing.

    No, she needed to take a look at those soldiers.

    She closed the gap quickly found herself upon them. The soldiers stopped their fire, gawking at her form. Maia drew in a deep breath, and crouched down, trying to pick one up between her thumb and index finger.

    He burst like a grape.

    She let out a high-pitched scream, and barely managed to keep herself from jumping back again, only taking a step back instead. She held her hand away from her body and felt the crushed remains of the soldier fly from her grip. She looked away too, closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. She had just killed someone with a pinch like it was nothing.

    No, it can’t be real! She managed to keep herself from throwing up too, though there was nothing to throw up. Calm down!

    Determined, she opened her eyes and brought her arm close to her face. She couldn’t see it properly, so she lowered it underneath one of the still working street lamps. Both her fingers were painted in crimson red.

    She gritted her teeth again, another instinct telling her to wipe her fingers on a nearby building. She shredded its whole facade sideways instead, revealing its interior. There were people inside, redheads.

    She watched them, stunned by the realness and detail of it all. They were scared, shouting something indiscernible at each other, crawling around the cracked floors. One of them hung preciously on a piece of wood jutting from the highest floor, facing three stories down. Maia thought she could hear the man shouting for help, though she clearly saw it.

    Do something.

    She stood still, watching in shock. She was afraid. The man’s hands slid a little, and woman approached him, trying to help. She reached out an arm, but it was futile, the man was too far from her.

    Do something!

    She was too afraid, afraid of what might happen if she did. The woman made a last attempt at trying to grab his hand, but the man slid further down along the piece of wood before his grip failed him entirely and he fell on the ground.

    Maia felt coldness spread throughout her body. Why was she just standing there? The man survived though, still twitching on the ground. The woman looked down, still shouting things before she stood up, looking around in panic for a way to escape the building.

    That’s when she saw Maia, and grew still in an instant. She saw her feet at first, looking at them like a small kitten that didn’t know much better. As the shock on her face grew, she traced Maia’s crouched, dark form with her sight until she saw a glimpse her face, and shook her head in disbelief.

    Then the whole building collapsed, dragging the woman with it as it buried the man and everyone else still inside beneath the rubble. Maia stood up in shock, covering her mouth with her hands. She had just killed again, her kind at that. And she could have saved them, but chose not to.

    Why? Tears flowed down her cheeks. “Please don’t let this be real!”

    She ran. Again, it felt like a natural thing to do. But where to? The lights of the whole city flickered as she did, silhouettes of dust and smoke casting dim shadows from the moonlight, her steps causing massive damage everywhere. She spotted a group of soldiers running away from her and it made her stop.

    Darkhairs. It’s all your fault!

    She took one step towards them, anger growing within, then another, and the third was a stomp right on their arm-rising forms.

    She felt their bursting bodies for a very brief moment before her foot buried itself deep beneath the surface, shattering all of it around the foot and sending massive chunks of concrete-embedded earth flying through the dark of the night. She even saw the shock wave with her own eyes as it traveled around her, extinguishing every light on its path and collapsing almost all buildings in her vicinity.

    She remained still for a long while after that, thinking about what she had just done. Fires started growing in spots of those collapsed structures, bathing her body with their brightening light. They revealed the damage to the city too, her city. She had killed half a dozen people in that building she tried to wipe her bloodied fingers on, what about the hundreds she was looking at that moment? Darkhairs, redheads, it hadn't mattered.

    She started laughing. It couldn’t be real. She had gone mad. In what possible way could any of it be real?

    The drain on her body came in an instant. But it was like she summoned it, like it heeded her calling. She wanted out, she wasn’t ready for any of it. It was too much.

    So she faded, everything becoming a blur. Next thing she knew, she found herself awakening to a sky full of stars again, but everything around her was normal, except entirely destroyed. And she was still naked, feeling the chill of the autumn winds on her bare skin gushing from the heat of the spreading fires.

    She stood up walked around without much thought, like a lost puppy, her movements becoming automatic. She spotted the body of someone leaned against the side of a half-collapsed wall. She approached it, noting it to be that of a darkhaired officer, blood running from the side of his head. But his coat looked fine. It took her some time before she stripped the body out of it.

    Afterwards, she walked around some more before she decided to head into one of more intact buildings, finding a thrown about couch on which she laid down and closed her eyes, burying herself within the coat as incredible exhaustion and trance-like state pushed her into a very deep sleep.

    It was like night turned into day in one blink.

    She stood up immediately, feeling a gaping hole in her stomach and unbearable thirst. For a few moments, she truly thought it had all been a dream, but as she walked out of the building with her bare feet, she grew weaker with each step, looking at the destruction all around her.

    It had been real.

    And there was not a single soul anywhere near her, the whole city felt deserted. Chunks of rubble sprawled everywhere, burnt out windows and collapsed roofs, even massive pieces of concrete spread all around, having been ripped out of their foundations with incomparable violence. She approached one such piece, put her palms on it and pushed with all her strength. It didn’t budge even for a hair’s length.

    “This was me…” she said, backing away from it.

    She moved again, out of the wholly destroyed district and into one that was just half collapsed, towards the hotel, or what was left of it. Along the way, she stopped for a moment, looked around her again and took in all the destruction in more detail.

    “This was me.” She said again, pulling her hands out of the coat and looking at them as she clenched and unclenched them, noting the difference between yesterday and now. “I did all of this.”

    She knew that somehow, this was just the beginning. That she would see a scene like the one she was seeing at that moment many times more in the future. In the space of a single night, she had finally lost everything, and gained all at the same time.

    Tucking her hands back into the coat, she tried to guess how she must have looked like from the ground for a moment. Somewhere deep inside of her, she felt a pleasant, warm rush of something she didn’t understand as she imagined her own frame on top of the city with vivid clarity, and thought,

    What now?