The Battle For Blogland Chapter 6: Revelations and Explanations

Yup. I guess it's here, then...
I hope it's good enough. Nix, sorry for the previous chapters. It's not like that now. One last thing; Eve is no longer in it.
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Theme: 'Next To Nothing' - Breaking Benjamin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lESLPWgg_M

6

REVELATIONS AND EXPLANATIONS

Though the place was already in complete silence, this new revelation of Ivy, alive, safe and seemingly unharmed, sent the entire area into a new kind of stillness. It was not tense as such, but very eerie. I remember standing there, staring at her for at least a minute while the rain continued splattering all around us all before anyone spoke again.

“Well…” said another familiar voice from the darkness and Gabriel Cobalt stepped forwards to inspect us for himself. “This is…unexpected, to say the least,” The silence quickly swarmed back in and billowed around us, solidifying itself again as quickly as it had been broken.

Then Ivy’s confused face frowned. It would have looked almost normal for her if her eyes hadn’t narrowed at the same time.

“Who are you?” she asked suspiciously.

There was another stunned silence.

“Uh…” Lynxia muttered, bewilderment becoming apparent in her tone. “It’s us, Ivy. Your friends?”

Ivy shook her head. “You look like my friends, but my friends are dead. We already discussed that.”

The third figure still in the darkness stepped forwards and Johanna Remus was thrown into view.

“Well, we were obviously wrong, Ivy,” she said. “Because they’re alive.”

“Nope, they’re dead,” Ivy repeated.

“If we’re dead,” Nixion started. “How come we’re here?”

“Well you obviously aren’t dead,” she said irritably. “My friends are dead. Lots of Hollow Men and probably vampires too.”

She shuddered at the mention of the creatures before Lavender started talking.

“But we’re alive, Ivy!” she said. “We’re your friends!”

“Nope,” she persisted. “Friends are dead. Don’t know how you are.”

“Ivy,” said Sparky’s bored voice.

“Yes, Imposter-Sparky?”

“We’re your friends.”

“No you’re not.”

“We’re your friends,” she said. “And we’re not dead.”

“You aren’t my friends.”

“Fine then,” Sparky said. “We’re not your friends; we’re the people who used to be your friends.”

Ivy looked at Sparky blankly.

“My friends are dead.” She said again and Johanna rolled her eyes.

“We’re not dead!” Sparky yelled. “If anyone’s dead, it’s you!”

Ivy stopped again, frowning.

“That…doesn’t change…” she started, but Sparky cut her off.

“Are you done being stubborn?” she asked, back to her tone of boredom with Ivy.

“Of course not!” she said, and she started striding down into the crater, drenched like the rest of us. “Stubborn is fun.”

***

No one went back to sleep that morning. We were all wide awake, fuelled with the revelation of Ivy, Gabriel and Johanna. As it turned out, Ivy finally stop accusing us all of being false imposters, even if it did take her half an hour to do so.

There was no more tension. There were no more cares, and the fire was left to burn as it pleased against the ever-so-slowly lessening rain while we busied ourselves with idle chatter. This ‘idle chatter’, I’m ashamed to say, was actually a fierce debate about which pie flavour was better – beef or bacon. Eventually, after a few hours of freelance discussion and ease, the sun slowly made its slow ascending return into the sky, only just managing to send light through the clouds that remained dense as ever. No brilliant orange light was streaked through the sky that morning. It got slowly lighter, and soon the fire was not needed, and was put out while the rain continued to patter around us.

Soon enough, however, the main concern on everyone’s minds was bought up, and the conversation was consumed by it again, only this time with fresh news.

“What happened to you?” asked Star to either one of the three who had appeared earlier that morning.

“Hollow Men,” said Gabriel. “And zombies. They came from nowhere; none of us can work out how. We fought, they drove us back and we were forced to leave.”

“Pretty much the same as us then,” said Nixion dryly.

“Happened to you as well then?” Johanna asked.

“Yeah,” said Flame. “But there weren’t any zombies.”

“Lucky you,” Ivy muttered.

“There were probably more Hollow Men for us to make up for it anyway,” I interjected.

“So there were just you three there when it happened?” asked Lavender.

There was a hesitation. Then-

“No,” Ivy said. “No. Izz was with us too. She got separated from us when we decided to run. We, uh…we think she’s dead.”

“But then,” said Johanna, “we thought you were all dead as well.”

“Just Izz?” Lynxia asked. “No one else?”

“Actually,” Ivy muttered. “There was…uh…” she paused. “What was his name again?”

Gabriel rolled his eyes and Sparky raised an eyebrow.

“Well he kept changing it!” she said defensively.

“Oh,” Nixion muttered. “Yeah, we found Dylan…”

“Oh,” Johanna smiled. “Where is he then?”

“He’s, uh…dead…” Nixion finished, rather bluntly.

“Oh,” Johanna mumbled, her tone rather different to what it was a moment ago. “Right.”

There was an awkward silence in which the rain took its chance to become audible again.

“I don’t suppose you’ve heard from Izz then?” Gabriel asked after a while.

“No,” Star answered.

Gabriel nodded and let Lynxia address them again.

“So, how long have you been on the run?” she asked.

“About a week now,” Ivy informed her. “There’s actually a small city a bit back. We’ve been staying there.”

“A city?”

“Yeah…”

“Could you take us there?”

“Well, yeah, but it’d take a few days,” she said.

“A few days?” Nixion asked. “I thought you said it was ‘just a bit back’?

“Well, it is,” Ivy said. “After you cross the desert.”

There was a pause.

“Right…” he muttered.

“We came out to get food,” Johanna said. “We were going to go back, but then we, uh…”

“Got lost?” Star supplied.

“We didn’t get lost.” Ivy corrected. “I don’t get lost. We accidentally went off-course, and…uh…”

“Got lost,” Star repeated.

“No…” she muttered.

“So was there anyone else living there?” Sparky asked.

“Well, no,” Gabriel said. “That’s kind of why we went looking for food. The city isn’t exactly a city. It’s more…the remains of a city.”

“Oh.”

“We’re planning on going back today anyway,” Johanna picked up. “There’s nothing out here so we’re going to try the other side of the city.”

“So none of you have eaten for a week?” Lavender asked them all, horrified.

“Oh,” Johanna laughed. “No, we’ve eaten. Water was a bit of an issue, but we managed. On the second night we found a deer in this forest place and last night we managed to find a rabbit. Not as big as the deer, of course, but it was better than nothing.”

“Well…” Lavander sighed. “At least you have eaten…”

By now, the sun had probably risen pretty high up and, though it was still raining, it was light, and it was time to get moving.

“We’re going with you then?” Nixion asked Ivy as most of the group stood, some stretching, others looking around.

“I guess so,” Ivy said. “Anyone have any place better to go?”

No one said anything.

Ivy grinned.

“Excellent,” she said.

And we set off again.

***

The day was not pleasant. The rain was still letting its contents down on us all as we travelled towards rather vague city, led by Ivy, Gabriel and Johanna. Small puddles filled the shallow indents in the ground of which certain people seemed unable to resist leaping in and sending water spraying everywhere. Admittedly, the rain from above and the water sent from the sides did not affect much. We had not once been dry since the previous afternoon, when the clouds had miraculously gathered in the sky and had showered us with rain.

Nixion seemed to be a lot happier now, for he did not say a single word of distaste to anyone, and was talking to the people around him with the same ease and tone he would have taken back at Central, as if nothing had happened at all. Perhaps it was simply the lack of water and the sun beating us down that drove him into a lasting bad mood the past few days. Either way, he was fine now, and remained that way for a long time, for days.

As did the rest of us.

The appearance of three friends acted as a stimulus for the rest of us to keep going, because the last two days took a hell of a lot out of us all. We had battle Hollow Men, almost suffocated in their released gassed, fled Central and run for the rest of the day. Sparky, Nixion and myself had stayed up that entire night on watch and we all spent the next day walking further from Central again under the intensely hot sun beating down on us. The rest of the group had remained awake the whole night while us three slept, but even that was not for long before we were woken by Ivy’s demand.

Needless to say, everyone was tired by that time; everyone with the exceptions of the three leading us to the city. Whether or not that was because they had rested enough to last for long periods of time awake without needed to sleep again or because they had already adjusted to the new conditions we were forced to live in, I didn’t know, and still don’t. It was kind of irrelevant at the time, however, and no one cared enough to ask them.

At least there was no overheating that day, especially compared to the previous twenty-four hours…

Around three hours passed with similar terrain – the green, uneven fields – before the desert Ivy had mentioned came into view.

“That’s the desert,” she said, not stopping as she crossed into the new land.

It was a very sudden transition from plains to desert. It was as if someone had drawn a straight line across the land and that was the only thing separating the two clashing environments. One side there was green, healthy and slightly too-long grass and other vegetation, and the other was a barren wasteland with no life-forms in sight, though both were drenched to the core.

The rest of us followed suit, but a few eyebrows were raised at the sight of the sudden transition between the two lands. It was just another example of how different the rest of Blogland was compared to our precious Central that was probably now contaminated with filthy Hollow Men and zombies.

However, while the ground had been cut off abruptly, the sky had no change whatsoever. Dark clouds still blocked any blue there may have been from view and they still allowed the rain to freely pass from above and proceed to soak us further.

It was a weird feeling, walking through the desert while ran poured from above. Nevertheless, we followed Ivy, Gabriel and Johanna in the same manner we had all been doing for the past few hours; lazily and half asleep, dragging along, not caring about the distance between the current position and the destination, simply longing to rest. Sleep was essential. And none of us had gotten enough of it. There had been eager reactions when Ivy had set off for the city while we trailed behind, possibly because, despite what they had said about it being in ruins, it sounded safe. And if those three had been staying there, as they had said, then it was most likely a place they could rest in freely.

The rest of the day passed in silence with many squelching of shoes against rain buried in sand and feeble attempts at conversation which died out quickly. The desert was, needless to say, full of wet, soaking sand. No animals were in sight and I didn’t see any pass on our way to the city. It wasn’t flat, either, definitely not like the place we had spent our first night, but it wasn’t as bumpy and ditch-y as the place we had been the previous night. There were no trees, neither living nor dead. A dead place in Blogland…

Finally, hours later, another abrupt line brought another change in environments. This time, however, it was not more grass. It was road. Looking up, we realised we had finally arrived at the city.

The rain was really pouring down here and thunder growled and lightning flashed across the sky. It was dark. Probably night, or else approaching it fast.

The buildings were tall, or they would have been if most of them hadn’t half crumbled to the ground. It was large and the whole thing looked rather menacing, especially with the lighting striking everywhere.

“Quick,” Ivy said, command in her voice again and started to run. “We’d better get under cover…”