"Why are there two giants fighting over there?" Tundra asked as he stared at them.
"They've been like that as long as I can remember," she said without taking her eyes off the book completely absorbed in the story.
One of the giants suddenly yelled, "How there you kill my wife! You'll pay for this!" The other answered with a simple insult towards his dead wife.
Tundra's eyes widened a bit as he leaned forward and focused on how the fight was going. Though hearing this unjust act woke Hirune up like a sleeper agent as she put the string back between the pages, handed it to Tundra, then pulled the smallsword out of the stone, a foggy trail following it as it moved.
One moment, she was standing next to Tundra, the next, the devourer jaws spat her out above the giants. She shot a bright yellow light out of her hand at the blue titan that had killed the red titan's wife. This light blew up in the titan's face, causing it to stumble back onto the floor panicking. Splashing water and throwing random sea-creatures at the other titan as it looked around for an escape. Then giving up on an escape, it started yelling and crying while scratching itself and rolling up in a ball.
"Namulenza, how do I use this sword?" Hirune asked as she plummeted into the water.
'You can use it how you'd expect a sword to be used. But, if you thrust with it, it will either blow a huge hole through the point you hit on your target. If that spot is a vital spot, the rest of their body will be sucked up into the spot you thrusted into oblivion. The other outcome is that they will simply be deleted from existence as if they never existed but it's rare for this to happen.'
Hirune nodded and devourer the distance between her and the red titan's head landing on it to catch her breath. Then she devoured the distance between her and the blue titan's head, thrusting her sword into it causing his head to disappear as if it was never there, though the rest of his body remained.
She quickly devoured the distance between her and Tundra before the red titan had a chance to react to what it just witnessed and placed the sword back in the stone before casually going back to reading as if nothing happened.
Tundra looked back at her and sighed as he stood, "We should go back to base before that thing spots us here."
Hirune froze as she marked her spot in the book and closed it as she stood up and looked at him with worry, "Back to the base?"
He nodded, "Yeah, is there something wrong with that? We could always walk around a bit more if you want."
Hirune shook her head, "It's not that there's something wrong it's just that, uh... I'm not sure I like it there anymore."
Tundra nodded and in a soft voice said, "I understand but, it's not safe for you out here. You see, after you consumed Namulenza's artifact - if you remember what an artifact is - the government started coming after you with assassins. There were ten and we've killed four thus far."
Hirune pulled the sword out, "I guess I'll keep this then, target: Void Blade to- Forsaken Realm."
"Only as a last resort though, the collateral damage of that thing is too large to use casually. As I was saying though, do you want to go back to base or walk a little longer?"
"Can't I just go back home?"
"They know where you live," he answered simply as they started walking back to town.
Hirune hugged the book tightly to her chest with one of her arms and held his hand with the other, "Yeah but you could always come every so often to check up on me. Actually, I wouldn't mind if you moved in completely."
Tundra tripped over his words for e second before pulling it together, "Well they could always outnumber us still. Maybe once there's like, three assassins left. But for now, we have to live in the base."
Hirune squeezed his hand a little tighter, "Alright then, I guess I don't have much choice." She looked into the distance thoughtfully as they walked. She was still opposed to the idea, but she didn't keep protesting it.
Tundra on the other hand seemed worried that he'd messed up somehow due to her silence, but he wasn't sure how to ask her about it. Then, suddenly, in an act seemingly of rebellion, she started running in a random direction. Somewhere far, yet nowhere in mind, she kept on running. Through the woods, through the swamps, under large arcs, by some lakes, then a sudden stop. She found herself in the middle of a field, a field covered in flowers of many different types, some dead, some alive, some growing, some in the midst of withering.
She squatted down near the woods and stared at the flower, Tundra flew past her with ice at his feet and flew face first into them. He slowly got up with a bunch of flower petals all over his head, a couple in his mouth.
She clapped with the book in her lap, "Woo! You're doing great!"
He walked over and dropped onto the ground next to her, "so why'd you start to run all of the sudden?"
"I don't know, well, I do, but I don't," she answered and didn't specify what she meant. She just kept staring at the flowers as if they were magical.
"Could you elaborate?" He asked sitting up.
She sighed and looked at the sky, "Let's see... Scientia potentia est, knowledge is power. When I got really into reading after reading Don Quixote, I started to think like that. I loved my classics, still do but, others are also really good. One day I started thinking about it while in the shower, I don't remember what exactly lead me to the thought, but I started at scientia potentia est and ended with: keeping yourself grounded is good for understanding others, but if you stay too grounded you lose understanding of yourself. I got to that after thinking of some balloon comparison. Something like how if you fill a balloon with too much helium but not too much for it to pop it floats away, and soars into the sky, but you can never get it back. If you fill a balloon with helium to the point it explodes, you also lost the balloon, but that balloon never got the chance to float."
He stared at her as she took a pause, really thinking about what she said.
She continued, "I stopped because I started soaring, and I started soaring because I was afraid. I was so afraid that I floated away, in other words, I ran away because I know that I don't know Ellen, Kala and Clint and don't trust them. But I jumped directly to being untrusting instead of staying grounded and trying to understand why I don't trust them, I never even thought of getting to know them... again... I guess I lost it. My way of living, reason being, I gave up on it. It was just a complicated way of saying a bunch of nonsense I didn't even understand, so I defaulted to justice for everything I could."
Tundra stood up, "And if you couldn't default to justice?"
"I don't remember," she answered as she stood and took his hand.
Tundra nodded as they started walking, "Don't worry about it for now, whenever you get to that moment, forget everything and do what feels right to you."