Chapter 4 - Chapter Four

13/4/2012 18:36

When Jason came around, something was jostling him up and down.

“What on earth?” he muttered.

Alex, who was running next to him, stopped when he saw that he was awake. He put his fingers in his mouth and gave two short blasts. Jason’s eyes widened.

“Don’t—”

The wolf shook itself and Jason fell off its back. He groaned.

“Thanks for that.”

“You should. Otherwise, you’d be riding on the back of a tiger.”

Jason scowled at him. “Where are we?”

“Two days away from camp.”

“What happened?”

“We were running away. I, being smart and having common sense, looked ahead. You, being totally dumb and idiotic, ran into a tree.”

Jason snorted. He wasn’t going to fall for that one. “I did not.”

Alex raised his eyebrows. “I beg to differ.”

Jason frowned. “Did I really?”

“Oh yes.”

Jason groaned. “Did she see me run into a tree?”

“She?”

“The girl?”

“Oh yes. She laughed, I believed.”

Jason groaned again.

“Why do you care whether the girl saw you run into a tree?” Alex asked him.

“Because I ran into a tree. She must’ve thought I was stupid.”

“I would’ve asked her that for you, but I was busy running for my life. Besides, the answer to that is pretty obvious.”

“You think you’re so clever.”

“I know I’m so clever.”

“One day, that phrase is going to come and bite you in the @$$. Trust me.”

“Get up. We’re lucky that the guy from the Reds stopped the girl from coming after us.”

“What? They did? Why?”

Alex shrugged. “Hell if I know.”

Jason frowned. “And you were supposed to be clever.”

“I’m clever, not a psychic or a gypsy with mind reading abilities.”

“Well, let me tell you a theory I have.”

“Go on then. Since we’re wasting our time, we might just as well fill it with your meaningless babble.”

Jason scowled, got up and started walking. “My theory is that the only reason they didn’t come after us is because they have something more important than we do.”

Alex snorted. “Impossible. We have the scroll, Jason. The Scroll.”

“Well, guess what? There’s something more important The Scroll,” Jason shot back, heavy sarcasm on the last two words.

“Like what?”

“The amulet.”

“The amulet?”

Jason gritted his teeth. “Yes, Alex. The Conjunct Amulet.”

Alex laughed. “The Conjunct Amulet is a myth, Jason. Grow up.”

“Well, give me a good reason why they didn’t come over us. You know, with one hurt and the other having just run into a tree and lost consciousness, we wouldn’t be hard to defeat.”

Alex fell silent then. “The wolves?” he offered weakly after a while.

Jason looked at him. Just looked at him. And that was all it took.

Alex groaned. “We should’ve gone after them, shouldn’t we?”

“We? No, no, no. Don’t blame me for this. I was unconscious. You are to blame for this.”

Alex glowered at him. “Our job was to steal the scroll and to bring it back to our base. We’re half way there. A mythical amulet will not deter me from my goal.”

“Yes, but when this mythical amulet turns out to be not so mythical after all, you know we’re going to get our asses kicked if they know that we could’ve had a chance to get the amulet but we didn’t because of some dumb scroll. This scroll isn’t even the important one.”

“The Black Ninja wanted this scroll for a reason, Sanders,” Alex hissed. “This is the Seventh Scroll, which I’m sure that even dumbasses like you, know that they’re almost as powerful as the Eleventh Scroll itself when combined with the Third Scroll.”

“But we don’t even have the Third freaking Scroll.” Jason hated these names. The Scrolls. The Conjunct Amulet. They sounded so…so…cliché. Ugh. He hated clichés even more than he hated the colour of his hair. And the only thing stopping him from dyeing the colour of his hair was because the Black Ninja didn’t allow artificial stuff. Ugh. The Black Ninja. Another cliché.

“We should get back.”

“The Seventh Scroll can wait,” Jason argued. “We should go after the amulet.”

“The amulet doesn’t exist! The Seventh Scroll is important.”

“The Seventh Scroll can go to Seventh Heaven for all I care. It’s useless except when combined with the Third Scroll, and we don’t even have it.”

Alex’s eyes widened. “One day, Sanders,” he said through gritted teeth. “You will learn to respect us.”

“I hope that day’s coming soon, because I am sick of this.”

“Then why don’t you leave?”

Jason snorted. “What, and be an Outcast?”

“Or be an Exile.” Alex smirked.

Jason flipped him off. “Come on. It won’t hurt to look.”

“But we don’t know where they’ve gone! They could be back at their base already.”

“That’ll take at most three days.”

“Five, actually.”

“At most. If we leg it, we can do it in three, or maybe even two. Besides, our tracking skills are good.”

Alex scrutinised him. “If we get into trouble, you’re to blame.”

Jason hesitated. “Fine.”

Alex sighed and shook his head before whistling to the wolves, which had wandered off. He rummaged around his bag, found the Throwing Star and held it under the wolves’ noses. Almost immediately, they started sniffing around and after a while, sprinted towards the direction of the lake.

Jason looked at his colleague and sometimes friend. There were times when Alex could be quite supportive and did what was best for them.

Alex looked warily at Jason. “You’re to blame if anything goes wrong,” he reminded him before running after the wolves.

This wasn’t one of those times.

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