Battle for Blogland Chapter 4: Foul Tempers

Dylan, sorry if this offends you (if you end up even reading this). I don't mean any disrespect to you in the slightest, it's just apart of the story. Sorry.
Nixion, same thing, just apart of the story. You're meant to be more like your character rather than you in this one because you're changing because of the Hollow Men and all that. Anyways...
Uh, this will be the second last chapter where nothing actually happens, you'll be glad to know. So next chapter and then action. Yay. So yeah, I know where I'm going with this, it's just a matter of getting it written and making sound better than random sentences strung together. Read!
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Theme: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHqo2FDJSU0
'Get Out Alive' by Three Days Grace

4

FOUL TEMPERS

 “Who the hell is that?” Sparky asked harshly, standing up as I returned to the group, Dylan’s limp body in my arms. Eve and Nixion quickly rose from the sides and grouped in front of me, their faces white. Or perhaps it was the moonlight playing tricks on their faces, because Nixion certainly didn’t seem worried or scared about who could appear to be unconscious or dead. In fact, he still looked particularly murderous.

“Jasper.” I said quietly. Dylan had never been my favourite person in the entire world, but his death was still a blow and he had still been an ally, if not a friend. “He’s dead.”

There was a short pause.

“…Uh…Who…?” Nixion asked, confused.

“…Jasper.” I repeated, not understanding why they were all looking at me like I was insane. “Y’know…Jasper Scourge?” No change. “Kai Oblivion?” I was still the insane madman. “Trelaque?” and now, apparently, I was an axe murderer with bad breath. “…Uh…Dylan Silver…?”

“Oh.” They all said in unison, a wave of realization rippling over their faces.

I rolled my eyes and placed the body on the completely flat ground in front of them a little less gently than I had intended. We all squatted down and inspected his face. Eyes open, expression angry and exhausted. His throat was slit and there were large rips across his clothing which were all beaten and ragged at this point as if he had been battling someone or something for days on end.

“I’m guessing…not Hollow Men work then?” Eve muttered uncertainly.

“How d’you figure that?” Nixion asked.

“Dylan was always saying how strong he was with his True Name power.” I answered. “I doubt Hollow Men would be able to kill him if he wasn’t lying.”

“And if he was lying?” Nixion continued.

I looked up at him.

“Then he was lying, what do you think?” I told him incredulously. As I returned my gaze to Dylan’s body, there was a blur of movement and next second there was a loud crack. Nixion’s arm was drawn back for another strike and Dylan’s nose was crocked, a trickle of blood already running down his recently scared face. I sighed and looked up at him again, catching sight of Eve and Sparky doing the same along the way.

“What?” he asked defensively. “He was so -”

“He wasn’t annoying,” Sparky shot back.

“He was a bit.” Nixion shrugged.

“Well, definitely not annoying enough to hit his dead body like that.” Sparky spat at him.

Nixion mumbled something incomprehensible and let his arm fall back to his side as we all returned our gaze to Dylan again.

“And I don’t remember Hollow Men having weapons either.” I said as if there had been no interruption in the conversation, gesturing towards the large cut across Dylan’s neck that looked like an open, dark red eye. “That doesn’t look like something they’d do.”

“Yeah, yeah…” Nixion muttered, straightening up again, bored already.

“What do we do with him then?” Sparky asked. I kept quiet and didn’t dare to answer. Here it was again with the leading. She may not have been talking to me, but Nixion had walked off already and Eve seemed to be waiting for someone else to speak too.

The silence that followed was another awkward one and it stretched for quite a time before being broken by a shout from Nixion.

“Are you coming back or not?” he asked. At once, I stood up again and walked away from Dylan’s body, relieved at the excuse to do so, and joined Nixion back at our positions of watch. Eve quickly followed, leaving a disgusted Sparky to carry Dylan’s bloody and broken body back to us which was quickly placed back onto the ground again.

Sparky sat down. Eve sat down. Nixion and I were already sitting. The cold was overwhelming. I was sure that the nights were never like this back at Central. Dylan’s dead and ragged body in front of us cast an even gloomier look over the area.

“Agh, what are we doing?” Nixion yelled suddenly after what seemed like a ten minute silence. “We should be back there,” he threw an arm in the general direction of Central. “Fighting. Fighting for what’s actually ours, instead of sitting around here like a bunch of cows just waiting to be killed off! And we’re literally signalling that we want to be killed because there is still smoke coming from that freaking fire!” Nixion was ignored by the rest of us, but he didn’t seem to notice, or else didn’t care and simply continued with his anger rant. Nothing was new; he had said the same thing at least three times two minutes in and had had similar outbursts throughout the night before Hope, Ink, Lynxia and Flame had succumbed to sleep.

After a little while, Nixion appeared to have exhausted his need to yell pointlessly again and re-joined us on the ground, allowing the silence to solidify around everyone once again. Amazingly, he hadn’t woken anyone in his rampage. Just as well – I thought, because the result would probably have been another petty fight over something…petty.

“Anyone know the time?” Eve asked quietly after a long while.

“Oh, yes!” Nixion said with mocking enthusiasm, looking down at his arm at once, leaping on the opportunity to speak. “Let’s see, it’s- Oh wait! It looks like I haven’t brought my watch along with me.” A glare solidified on his face as he turned back too Eve. “Darn.”

Eve looked hurt at Nixion’s words but didn’t say anything more and Nixion earned himself a dark glare from me that was ignored completely. With Nixion’s temper obviously running low and his restrain on it became weaker, his outbursts soon became welcome distractions from the cold. The times when the silence bore down on us again, the cold ate relentlessly at our flesh, determined on causing as much discomfort as possible, seemingly. When Nixion was raging again, however, we were all so determined on restraining ourselves from yelling back at him that the cold became a mere minor annoyance in the background.

Eventually, it became apparent that we were going to be up all night. The others showed absolutely no signs of stirring during the three hours following the discovery of Dylan’s dead body and no one had any desire to wake them. Eve was actually the only one who showed any signs of fatigue but persisted and made it clear that she was going to finish the shift, stubborn as always. Though, stubbornness, nowadays, was seen as determination instead so no one questioned her, even though I caught her grinning when this was accepted so easily. After a while, Nixion’s raging grew boring, even for him, and he decided to give it a break for a while. It seemed he still had energy to burn out, though, and ended up pacing around us in a deformed kind of circle.

Despite Nixion’s obvious statement of it being entirely irrelevant, however, Eve’s inquiry of the time turned out to be the main thought on everyone’s mind from the moment after Nixion stopped yelling. With the sun showing no signs of rising yet, it was impossible to tell. It took a while for the silence to be broken after that and, again, it was Nixion who was the one to break it. During the time in-between, Eve had finally drifted into an uneasy sleep, her head rested on my shoulder. Nixion stopped his pacing and sat down again, still agitated, still restless, still obviously annoyed at some useless thing that was probably biting at his flesh as much as the cold was. It was only ten minutes after he had sat again before he spoke.

“I hate the silence.” He muttered darkly. After four hours of an intense period of it, the silence had simply been broken to be complained about.

“You hate everything.” Sparky said, tonelessly; whether or not it was because she didn’t have enough energy to put meaning into her voice or because she was eager to avoid another meaningless argument, it was impossible to tell.

“I hate this place…” he continued, ignoring Sparky’s comment.

“Everything.” I agreed and was ignored by Nixion just as Sparky had been.

Slowly, the sun begun rise from the ground again, drenching the sky in a magnificent orange as it did so. The scene was more like a sunset than a sunrise, but it looked amazing just the same. That morning was probably the only time the sky wasn’t covered in dark, gloomy clouds from then on, but again, there wasn’t much time to appreciate it before our attention was drawn away again. Once the sun made its appearance, it was judged that the time was roughly around the six o’clock mark. It didn’t make a difference to anything, it didn’t mean anything, but it was discussed thoroughly among the three of us still awake simply because it was something to do. We knew we would be moving again today, so there was no point trying to work out the times based on the sun position in the sky. Even if we weren’t running full-pelt forwards like the previous afternoon, we knew that we were still going to cover enough ground with a full days walk to displace the sun in our view. Displace it enough to mess up the time anyway. So we didn’t bother. Instead, we all started counting the minutes instead to pass the time. Of course, when we compared our times with each other, everything was completely different. This, of course, started another argument, fuelled mostly by Nixion and, after two minutes, carried out by only him and Sparky, myself having dropped out in order to keep Eve in her state of sleep.

The sun had risen a fair way up by the time their meaningless argument had died out, and the cold had all but dissipated. I could tell that it was going to be a stinking hot day and one that would probably hold a few cases of dehydration in some of us due to lack of water. We could only really hope that the next place we stopped at would contain some kind of water source. I felt the weight on my left shoulder slowly lessen as Eve pulled her head off it and massaged the side of her neck, waking.

“We’d better wake the others.” Sparky muttered gloomily.

The spirits were still low…

***

Everyone was awake. Eve, who had managed to gain a few hours of sleep, wasn’t as foul tempered as Sparky, Nix and me, but it wasn’t far off. Having just stayed up all night looking out for signs of something that didn’t come with the prospect of embarking on full day of nothing but walking wasn’t exactly setting us in the best of moods. Lynxia, Lavender, Star and Flame had all said that they would take watch the next night. I could see Nixion struggling to keep in a snappy retort when they had mentioned this, but I was glad he managed to restrain himself. It would probably make the day easier to get through if arguing wasn’t the main thing that was happening other than continuous walking. We decided to leave Dylan’s body on the ground in the most respectful manner we could. There wouldn’t be any point in carrying it to the next place and a dead body would do nothing to lift the moods of everyone. The others were shocked when they saw Dylan, but there wasn’t anything anyone could do. Time was of the essence, so goodbyes were said from people who had them and then we prepared to leave.

As Nixion made sure he still had his machete safe and sound for the third time in the hour, we reluctantly left the place of entirely flat plains and begun the walk. As I had predicted, it was a stinking hot day…