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Diana ■■■■■■■■

“The silent observer”

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Diana glanced back toward Harry… His breathing seemed to quicken by the second, hyperventilating perhaps… She quickly approached him, determined to calm him down… If that were possible but something strange happened… His breathing suddenly transformed back to a still and slow rythm… In the blink of an eye… He was calm. Strange. Her hand shifted forward toward his cheek… In a way to calm him down even more if he needed it… But her hand was already there… When had she put it there? Her head tilted slightly to the side… examining her hand as she roamed her memory for the exact moment of when she had put it there… Nothing. She couldn’t remember doing so.

Harry gently stood up, putting a hand onto her shoulder as a form of support to stand up; he didn’t even glance back at her when he did so… His whole demeanor changed in a mere instant. Diana swiftly turned around, her dagger flying out of its sheath as it pressed near his throat. “Do I look like some stepping tool for you to use and discard?” Her voice came out firm…

Harry’s eyes narrowed coldly… He didn’t seem to recognize her. What the hell was going on? “Move” The words that he uttered were like a command. There wasn’t a choice and yet… It didn’t make her waver… Did this guy really think she would take orders like that from him after such blatant disrespect?

Harry’s blade swooshed out of its sheath. It flew right toward Diana’s face. The blacksmith, who had witnessed the exchange happen earlier, dashed forward to grab onto Harry’s shoulder to pull his sword as far away as he could in this short time… But Harry had already changed the path of his blade… It was aimed directly at him. Had he read… What did he call it again? Right. The waves of space… Had he read them in this short amount of time to anticipate them?

The blade swished in the air…warping around the waves of space around it. Harry’s awareness of them until it slashed through the cheek of the blacksmith ripping right through his skin with an high velocity that no one saw coming… It was a miracle he hadn’t outright killed him with that attack… The blacksmith stumbled backward until his back fell against the soft rocky path that made the ground… Staring down at him… Whoever they both called Harry, with a dark and cold ruthless glare… His metallic left hand tightened against the handle of the blade as he shifted it down toward the blacksmith… Diana stood behind Harry in complete shock. He had just been so ruthless out of the blue… What the hell?

Diana quickly composed herself, ready to take down the newfound…friendly…threat. She quickly dashed forward toward Harry who stood away from her… Her dagger flew gracefully in the air as she swung it toward him… Harry shifted strangely, his gaze meeting the sign that announced that they were at the entrance of the fishing village with a confused “Huh?” ”.

“Hey Diana, do you remember how we got—” Diana quickly used the blunt end of her dagger and punched it roughly in Harry’s jaw, who stumbled wildly back into the sign of the village… Diana froze as she saw his face… He wasn’t cold anymore… This was the same Harry that she knew… Her hand shook against her grip on her dagger… This felt so wrong… What was up with him… Why had he switched up so much in mere moments?

“What the hell was that for, Diana?!” Harry practically yelled at her, which made the blacksmith flinch while Diana kept still… Analyzing the situation… She gently walked up to him before crouching down to meet his face with her eyes silently…

For a moment, the wind passed around them as no words were said… The soft mix of their breath colliding against the previous tension that had been caused by this combat and then a question echoed within the waves… “What’s the last thing you remember before I punched you…?” Harry glanced toward the invisible eye for a moment… At least that’s what Diana was assuming he was looking at… He probably was insulting it or whatever… It didn’t matter. “Harry, I asked you a question.”

“I… uhm… I was leaning against the tree over th—” He froze as he glanced at the tree he had expected to be way closer than it was… It was so far away now… Just how much time had passed? His vision roamed the trees in confusion… The eye… What it had told him… Was it truly true? Could it truly erase events… “Holy shit…” The words came out of his mouth like a plea for himself to wake up from a horrible nightmare…

The blacksmith held his cheek in pain as he observed what was happening between the two from afar… He truly did not remember what he had just done?… Or was he just trying to save his ass like a coward… But that look in his eyes…Tch.

Harry gently stood up with the help of Diana before glancing toward the bleeding blacksmith. “Huh… Are you alright?” He asked as he extended a hand toward him… The blacksmith glared back at his hand, quickly swatting it away as he slammed his hand against the ground to steady himself up… The blood that had covered his hand was now staining the very ground he had been on. “Don’t touch me…” He groaned as he faced him… His cold glare meeting Harry’s soft eyes.

Diana watched the exchange between the two and let out a small sigh… This was going to stab them in the back one day… Definitely. A group based on hate… It wasn’t meant to be.

“Boys… Stop fighting like two damn confused dogs…” The analogy didn’t even make sense… But she didn’t care. “Let’s just keep going forward, alright?”

“Aw, fuck that.” The blacksmith wasn’t even finished with his sentence as he threw a violent right hook straight toward Harry… In a manner that felt like an instinct that Harry never had before now… The waves seemed way more clear since his “confusion.” With ease, he dodged the hook by shifting his head away from it… Harry slowly turned his head to stare at the blacksmith. Not in anger, but in confusion. How was he so good with this “ability” of his now? …?

Diana scanned Harry with her eyes… Silently roaming him. Whatever he had done and forgot he did… His body still kept the experience… Interesting…

“Boys… Can we just… Do what we are here to fucking do already?” She spoke with a stern tone… Like a mother scolding her kids. Harry and the blacksmith glared at other for a moment… One was more aggressive than the other before scoffing. “Whatever,” the blacksmith said. Damn brats.

Harry and the blacksmith followed after her like dogs on a leash as the three of them all entered the fishing village. A grand village built on water made up of sticks of wood formed a platform where they built everything. It was crowded. The commerce of fish was huge in these parts of the island after all. But something was off… Not the village itself, but she. It felt off. She had been acting different… Harry and the blacksmith wandered off inside the village, both knowing exactly what they were supposed to do: find someone that is willing to join their little Hate team so that they can do whatever the fuck Harry had planned…

Maybe it was just the smell of the fish that had been making her act so weird…? Definitely not… That didn’t make—That’s it… Harry said earlier that he had forgotten what he had been doing… What if… Whatever happened to him altered her too… She slowly sat down on a nearby fish crate as thoughts came crashing through her mind.

Humans… we are mere beings that simply interact with stimuli… we ingest, digest, and release them… Thats all we do… All we are. But what if the intended stimuli that you were fated to experience were changed… What would happen then? Is that why I feel so weird now …? Her heart pounded deeply into her chest… Was… Was she allowed to think like this…? This god that Harry had mentioned… What would it do to her if she mentioned what she had in mind? Her eyes shot up as a fisherman suddenly collapsed to the ground right in front of her. What had happened?! Was he alright? Was he—oh. He just tripped on a fish.

Letting out a small sigh she glanced forward, her gaze trying to find the two boys that had acted like dumb dogs minutes… How long had it been? Whatever… They’re probably going to come back here when they found who they needed to find…

A hand gently positioned itself on her shoulder… It was cold… Too cold. Her head tilted to the side to look at who it was… No one…? Nobody was there… Why had the touch felt like… She sighed, leaning back… Was he reaching out from the dead …? No… She definitely was just imagining things… Ghost, spirits… A mere concept inspired by things meant to scare children at night… Right? Her questions wouldn’t be answered yet… maybe even never as Harry and the blacksmith walked back from their little errand with… You had to be shitting me. The guy wasn’t even five feet tall? She let out an audible groan as she stood up to glare down at the man that looked like a mere child.

“Harry… Smith-boy… Are you two serious right now?” She said as she gave them both a cold glare… Were they wasting her damn time?

Harry let out a small chuckle. “Yeah. We aren’t fucking with you, Diana. Listen…” He said as he gently approached her. “I might be her ‘right-hand,’ but I do not know everything there is to know about her castle. But… Who do you think helped the very creation of that castle… Who was betrayed in the end by the queendom? The fishing village.”

She froze for a moment before grinning ear to ear. “you mean…”

“Exactly, just that. This man knows where the previous chief of the village hid the plans to the castle in the case that a revolution was needed…and he accepted to show them to us. The blacksmith added.

Harry stepped forward between the small group of four. “The plan is simple… Today we go get that damn map…We analyse it as best as we can… The day after that we go scout the castle to see if anything is different or not. We enter it to get a single item. Elaria’s logbook.”

Diana paused. “Why the hell do we need that brat’s notebook? Can’t we just kill her and be done—”

“Like I’ve said already… My mission is to save her. You can try to kill her…after. But now we need the logbook because I’m sure she has information about the gem in there.”

“Oh…Alright…let’s go get the map…” Diana muttered.