But at a time like this, when they had pretty much nothing, it mattered so much.

Her uncle put his hand on her shoulder, guiding her forward, with an impatient kind of insistence, and she bit back the urge to shrug it off or get angry. There was time for that later, when Sam wasn’t watching. They could have had a house and instead they got a tent, and she was pretty sure a few nights of sleeping in a tent would only drive this feeling home.

They pushed open the doors, stepping outside, and into the brand new city that stood on the edge of the end of the world. The sun was bright and the golden city even brighter, to the point it brought tears to her eyes.

⊙

She faced down the giantess, viewing her with senses that had nothing to do with eyes. The world was littered with shattered glass that nobody could see, and she could see all of the reflections in that glass. A woman too bright to look at, too intense, every aspect of her pulling, tugging, driving, manipulating. It was like standing beneath a waterfall, the water crashing down from above, and trying to swim to the top. Impossible.

Just by being here, the giantess made everything harder.

The thing that had been Hunter touched a long-fingered hand to a hole in her face. Then she laughed, high and loud, the sound vibrating from the columns and cords that decorated her surroundings.

So ridiculous.

The way she was now, she could swim up waterfalls.

She stepped on wires and conjured up more, climbing higher and higher, to match the giantess that now flew. Her psyche was a funhouse mirror of a funhouse mirror self. A her that had been distorted and broken and put back together again before this new body started plucking and snatching up scant memories. Picking from dance lessons and schoolyard games to figure out how it should move and hold itself together.

She danced up wires and pillars and ascended skyward, faster than the giantess could rise.

She stared down her opponent with senses that weren’t eyes, and saw facets of the woman in places so buried they weren’t in this world with its statues sticking out of buildings, its people in fancy clothes.

She saw memories and events. A palace. Luxurious clothes, handmade for her. Servants. Good food. The woman had power, in so many ways. She could ask for things to be done without worrying about how.

The inverse of what lay behind that funhouse-in-a-funhouse psyche, deep within the thing that had been Hunter.

Cords became elastic, and the thing that had been Hunter let herself tip forward, then snap toward the giantess, a rubber band fired from a hand. She was deflected, struck by thrown buildings, and those buildings crumbled with the impact more than she did.